Don't worry about it, seriously. There are much stranger things about the Earth than this.
For instance, the Earth's gravitational field takes a big dip right over India. Why? Hell if anybody knows besides "there's a density anomaly in the mantle under India". The magnetic poles of the earth flip every tens of millions of years or so.
I can drone on for a while if you want, but I think you get the picture.
The whole thing is interesting to geophysicists, but it doesn't do anything to effect everyday life.
Feel safe. Go back to coding or whatever. Have a beer.
Geez. The Earth's rotation is already slowing due to other things (and has been for a very long time), and the moment of inertia for the Earth is gigantic. A couple meters of water isn't going to change much, and the planetary climate changes are much more sensitive to other things than loosing a tiny bit of rotation every hundred millin years or so.
There are two competing factors, the force away from the center of the earth caused by the Earth's rotation, and that of gravity. The Earth is about 15km different in diameter from poles to equator, with the equator being further away than the poles. While it might be true that the Earth's gravity field (the gravitational equipotential field, or the "geoid" I believe) has been getting flatter, it still isn't round. While I haven't checked the equations lately, I think gravity still wins out over the rotational part, and you'd be _heavier_ when you moved to the poles, due to being in closer proximity to the center of the earth.
The Earth's rotational rate is changing due to energy lost during ocean and earth tides (the solid part of the earth goes up and down in response to the gravitational tugging of the moon as well), as well as a differential rotation between the Earth's inner and outer core, etc. I don't think a small change in sea level will do too much compared to what is already occuring. The Earth has a radius of about 6371 Km, pretty much all of it having a denisty _significantly_ larger than water (a good chunk of the earth consists of nickel-iron after all!). I don't think a couple more meters of water will do much.
If the U.S. Postal Service can afford to think about irradiating every piece of mail, I think they could probably irradiate some grain. It isn't all that hard, as you can do it in bulk. I'm sure there must be a facility already set up somewhere, as companies and organizations have already done market testing of irradiated food to the public. People don't like it, but we certainly have the techonology laying about.
Wide scale irradiation would seem to be cheap and sterilize the corn, no? Also, couldn't they just mill the damn stuff? Hard to grow something from seed when it's been pulverized to powder. There has to be more to it than this.
Any geek worth his salt just orders out pizza and gets back to coding. Lazy cooking bastard! In my day we didn't even leave to go the bathroom, we just... well that's another story I guess.
Oh I don't know, I can think of a bunch of things that will add value:
1) What about lyrics distributed along with the song? 2) Videos anybody? 3) Making songs easy to find. 4) Helping you find music you like ("Oh, you like that beatles song?? We also have these three different versions of that song recorded live. Would you like to listen to those too? What about this Stone Temple Pilots version of the same song??" Or maybe, "Our statistical calculations say you like this type of music, you're about to waste 10 downloads at the end of the month. Here are some songs you might want to check out...". Just use your imagination here. 5) Histories and stories of the songs and the people who made them. 6) Online interviews with artists. 7) a trillion other things... use your imagination.
I think there could be tons of value added. I'd love to use a service like this, as soon as it becomes cheap and truly has alot of content.
Dude, chill out. We all appreciate your work. I'm sorry if it doesn't seem like it.
I think the _question_ he was answering was: "can anyone who's been using it since then comment on how well it works?". He wasn't spontaneously bitching. And it seems like you _are_ taking the attitude that it is not your problem. Perhaps rightfully so.
I have a busy life, and try to take the extra time to help others as well. I definitely know what its like to feel under appreciated. However, seeing as how your work just got a post on Slashdot, and with most (if not all) people complimenting your work, I really don't see as how you can complain that much.
Maybe its time to take a weekend off and go somewhere with your girlfriend. Does wonders for me.
Off topic, but the quote from you sig is originally from Einstein. Aasimov must have "appropriated" it. Hey, if you have to steal, steal from the best.
I just tried installing on my Mandrake 8.2 box, and it rendered my KDE unuseable, and barfed on my system.
I had a very recent backup, so I forced the installation (using urpmi *.rpm). Perhaps not the brightest thing to do, as it complained quite a bit, but I forced it anyway.
Anyway, buyer beware. Now I get to sit reading slashdot while I recover my system!!
Hey Hugo, if you're out there, Mondo covered my ass!!;-)
I don't think so. What you say has always been true. Companies try to hold on and patent the things they do, then other companies reverse engineer it when it comes out. Anything that has government funding however (read NSF), almost _must_ fascilitate data sharing and publication.
For instance, I am in seismology. My research group puts out arrays of seismometers in the western U.S. The data we obtain is only proprietary (even though we did _all_ the work) for a couple years. After that it is open to the world. If we haven't published yet, tough luck., and if we don't publish, don't count on another grant in the future. This is because we took NSF money to do it.
I grew up in Arizona, where I would guess the name "Prescott" came from for their new upcoming chip. Its a small city, and there aren't many rivers in AZ besides the Gila and the Colorado. I think Intel is branching out!
I like the book "Forever Peace", by Joe Haldeman the best. Remote control "soldier boy" super robots controlled by nuerally "jacked in" people (i.e., brain shunt, think of computer hook up to brain from back of neck, sort of Ender's Game style). Complete immersion of reality for the person jacked in, except with incredible power. Joe Haldeman isn't a hack writer either, he's won a Hugo, and is considered more or less one of the SF Masters. It's full of insight in to the human condition, and war. Great read if you are interested in the morality of remote control war.
To give you some flavor: The main character is a physicist on his off hours when he isn't jacked in. He finds evidence of something that may kill everybody, but is not sure he wants to do anything about it, because he is sometimes desperately suicidal. He has to deal with his own will to survive, the taking of other's lives, love, and the guilt of killing and death.
Now go read it!
Re:maybe the best server OS is not the best PDA OS
on
Linux PDA Part Deux
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Reality check: The source code for modern linux probably doesn't share but a couple lines of code from the 386 designed days. Nowadays Linux is designed for running on many, many different platforms, and definitely not for a 386s. Its designed to be flexible and scalable.
Second: If you "start from scratch" you are destined to repeat many mistakes. It is smart to leverage existing source code if it can be adapted to your uses. Due to Linux's design (see first paragraph), it can be used in PDAs, and is therefore a viable and attractive solution. Other larger copmpanies use Linux in PDAs (such as Sharp and Compaq), do you think they are stupid too?
As far as usability, that doesn't have a damn thing to do with the kernel, that has to do with the applications in the user space. Each PDA company would have to write most of their own anyway (beside using Opera for instance, which is better than IE for PDAs actually), so you can make them plenty usable.
Screw that. I'll be using them for remotely telemetered scientific equipment. It's a dream come true. No more having to rely on batteries (Which generally go bad if you let them run dead. I hate buying new batteries.) No more solar panels. Just stick a big 'ol bottle of hydrogen on a big 'ol fuel cell, and let er go. Just visity every month to pick up the data and change the hydrogen if necessary. Power systems are always the weak link, and the vagaries of the sun, and the inherent weak natures of batteries are the worst part of it. As for cost.... for most big scientific experiments, you're paying 100 of thousands of dollars, I think several thousand+ for reliable and reusable energy sources should be negligible.
Trust me, there are many many applications that have been hotly anticipating this that have nothing to do with cars or RVs.
I hope this isn't off topic, but a segment of the government that doesn't get much spotlight is the work the USGS does. Here's a great example. The USGS does a great job for the country (whether or not you like the big brother mentality of this article). They monitor stream flow, mineral resources, earthquake activiey, etc.
I use to work for the USGS and they have had their budget cut year after year. I don't think they'll do too well under the Bush administration either. One of the things they were really working on when I left them was public relations. The USGS does alot for you all, whether you know it or not. Everyone in the/. community will get in an uproar when NASA gets its huge budget cut, but I would make the case you should all be aware of the great work the USGS does, and maybe support their great silent works.
No office suite is very good yet. As soon as one pokes its head out from the others with the stablity and features necessary, then it will probably be adopted as more or less "standard" (although it could be that we get more than one, which is probably fine). RedHat should not adopt any office suite as standard, because that would interfere with the evolution and natural selection of the best office suite. Just wait a little bit, and things will sort themselves out. Same is true for the web browser (konqueror really is pretty good, and Mozilla/gecko is getting better all the time). I've seen the cries of "X-windows doesn't do 3-D", and "we don't support USB", and "the kernel doesn't scale well", etc., etc..... the point is we always seem to get there. The same is true of office suites. We have several serious contenders now. Just let them evolve. In a year, we'll have a serious contender to MS Office.
Actually, there _are_ regulations about junk mail.
Go to junkbusters.com and check it out.
They have convenient forms to fill out and print
to people who hold databases on addresses for you,
etc. They are required to remove you if you
ask. Also works for phone calls, etc.
They also make a web proxy which blocks cookies
and banner ads etc. Well worth the browse:
Maybe somebody there has freakin' clue! I might actually have to watch this show. Go to their site site , then their "988.2" alt database section. Then for instance go to the "988.28" white hat/black hat section. (It's all sort of a weird flash site, you'll have to wade through it).
Check out these links there:
The Hacker Quarterly (i.e., 2600)
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Freedom Downtime (free Kevin page)
Attrition.org
There are even others. All and all actually interesting links. This leads me to a question:
 
WHICH ONE OF YOU BASTARDS HAS STARTED INFORMING ON US TO HOLLYWOOD!! YOU HAVE SOME ANSWERING TO DO!!;-)
Seriously, if they actually are seeking the advice of computer geeks instead of graphic designers, this show might be sort of cool, in a crappy hollywood sort of way. Anybody seen it?
I'm a regular user of both Solaris and Linux for scientific applications.
I don't see why anyone would want to use Linux for Solaris. In the future I think we will be using mostly big multiprocessor x86 machines running Linux, with workstations being PCs running linux. Solaris boxes will be relagated to the really large multiprocessor machines, and the ocassional one around for legacy apps.
This is because I in general find Linux much more pleasing to work with. The gnu utilities are in general, far superior. KDE/Gnome beats the crap of CDE any day of the week. The ability of Linux to work in a heterogenous environment (i.e., so easily work with smb shares, nfs, etc.) is great.
I find Solaris, while not unpleasant to use, definitely not as pleasing on a day to day basis. I am also amazed at how poorly it performs sometimes. I know Solaris is supposed to perform well, and I just don't understand it. I do operations on fairly fast hardware, such as removing many files, etc., that I _know_ my little linux box could do faster. I don't administer the Solaris boxen though, so it could be our sysadmin just doesn't know how to set them up efficiently? I don't know.
I would greatly look forward to running Linux on them instead. Unfortunately, the only reason I'm not doing research on a x86 box is that many of the programs, libraries etc. I use in my research are Solaris specific. They aren't ported to Linux yet. However, this is changing quickly, and I actually only need one more vendor to support linux and I can drop Solaris. Its ironic, because in every other way, the application base for Linux kicks the crap out of Solaris. Running windows emulators can even get me Windows apps (for those damn word attachments etc.).
I recently set up a little linux farm for a colleague of mine who is starting up a lab at a major university. He had previously used no other Unix except solaris. I set him up personal linux work stations, and a solaris enterprise for the main number crunching. His statement after using it for a week was "I love it. Anybody else who isn't using this setup for research is stupid." He now has colleagues interested in using a similar setups.
My analysis, as far as the world of science is concerned, is that Sun is in big trouble. I can get pretty impressive PCs nowadays. The workstations and servers of the future will be running Linux and fast/big PCs. Sun will be relegated to the very high end, big multiprocessor machines, although people are gradually going beowulf too.....
Sun has a little breating room until Linux can get better SMP support for many processors, the journaling file systems become more robust, PC hardware becomes larger scale (Can you even easily get, say a 4 or 8 processor PC?), and more applications kick in. After that, I forsee Sun and Solaris getting dropped like a hot rock.
Big tall idols to my mythic gods should populate my workspace. There should be plenty of altars for sacrifice, and nice gutters for the blood to run down when things get too hectic. After a hard day coding, there's nothing like ripping out the heart of some of the pathetic management. I would also appreciate a survivor-like central meeting place where all can gather to vote people off the island.
Oh.. and free sodas, windows and skylights, as well as alot of work space.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry about it, seriously. There are much stranger things about the Earth than this.
For instance, the Earth's gravitational field takes a big dip right over India. Why? Hell if anybody knows besides "there's a density anomaly in the mantle under India". The magnetic poles of the earth flip every tens of millions of years or so.
I can drone on for a while if you want, but I think you get the picture.
The whole thing is interesting to geophysicists, but it doesn't do anything to effect everyday life.
Feel safe. Go back to coding or whatever. Have a beer.
Geez. The Earth's rotation is already slowing due to other things (and has been for a very long time), and the moment of inertia for the Earth is gigantic. A couple meters of water isn't going to change much, and the planetary climate changes are much more sensitive to other things than loosing a tiny bit of rotation every hundred millin years or so.
I don't think so?
There are two competing factors, the force away from the center of the earth caused by the Earth's rotation, and that of gravity. The Earth is about 15km different in diameter from poles to equator, with the equator being further away than the poles. While it might be true that the Earth's gravity field (the gravitational equipotential field, or the "geoid" I believe) has been getting flatter, it still isn't round. While I haven't checked the equations lately, I think gravity still wins out over the rotational part, and you'd be _heavier_ when you moved to the poles, due to being in closer proximity to the center of the earth.
The Earth's rotational rate is changing due to energy lost during ocean and earth tides (the solid part of the earth goes up and down in response to the gravitational tugging of the moon as well), as well as a differential rotation between the Earth's inner and outer core, etc. I don't think a small change in sea level will do too much compared to what is already occuring. The Earth has a radius of about 6371 Km, pretty much all of it having a denisty _significantly_ larger than water (a good chunk of the earth consists of nickel-iron after all!). I don't think a couple more meters of water will do much.
If the U.S. Postal Service can afford to think about irradiating every piece of mail, I think they could probably irradiate some grain. It isn't all that hard, as you can do it in bulk. I'm sure there must be a facility already set up somewhere, as companies and organizations have already done market testing of irradiated food to the public. People don't like it, but we certainly have the techonology laying about.
Wide scale irradiation would seem to be cheap and sterilize the corn, no? Also, couldn't they just mill the damn stuff? Hard to grow something from seed when it's been pulverized to powder. There has to be more to it than this.
Any geek worth his salt just orders out pizza and gets back to coding. Lazy cooking bastard! In my day we didn't even leave to go the bathroom, we just ... well that's another story I guess.
Oh I don't know, I can think of a bunch of things that will add value:
...". Just use your imagination here.
1) What about lyrics distributed along with the song?
2) Videos anybody?
3) Making songs easy to find.
4) Helping you find music you like ("Oh, you like that beatles song?? We also have these three different versions of that song recorded live. Would you like to listen to those too? What about this Stone Temple Pilots version of the same song??" Or maybe, "Our statistical calculations say you like this type of music, you're about to waste 10 downloads at the end of the month. Here are some songs you might want to check out
5) Histories and stories of the songs and the people who made them.
6) Online interviews with artists.
7) a trillion other things... use your imagination.
I think there could be tons of value added. I'd love to use a service like this, as soon as it becomes cheap and truly has alot of content.
Dude, chill out. We all appreciate your work. I'm sorry if it doesn't seem like it.
I think the _question_ he was answering was: "can anyone who's been using it since then comment on how well it works?". He wasn't spontaneously bitching. And it seems like you _are_ taking the attitude that it is not your problem. Perhaps rightfully so.
I have a busy life, and try to take the extra time to help others as well. I definitely know what its like to feel under appreciated. However, seeing as how your work just got a post on Slashdot, and with most (if not all) people complimenting your work, I really don't see as how you can complain that much.
Maybe its time to take a weekend off and go somewhere with your girlfriend. Does wonders for me.
Off topic, but the quote from you sig is originally from Einstein. Aasimov must have "appropriated" it. Hey, if you have to steal, steal from the best.
I just tried installing on my Mandrake 8.2 box, and it rendered my KDE unuseable, and barfed on my system.
;-)
I had a very recent backup, so I forced the installation (using urpmi *.rpm). Perhaps not the brightest thing to do, as it complained quite a bit, but I forced it anyway.
Anyway, buyer beware. Now I get to sit reading slashdot while I recover my system!!
Hey Hugo, if you're out there, Mondo covered my ass!!
I don't think so. What you say has always been true. Companies try to hold on and patent the things they do, then other companies reverse engineer it when it comes out. Anything that has government funding however (read NSF), almost _must_ fascilitate data sharing and publication.
For instance, I am in seismology. My research group puts out arrays of seismometers in the western U.S. The data we obtain is only proprietary (even though we did _all_ the work) for a couple years. After that it is open to the world. If we haven't published yet, tough luck., and if we don't publish, don't count on another grant in the future. This is because we took NSF money to do it.
Uh Uh,
I grew up in Arizona, where I would guess the name "Prescott" came from for their new upcoming chip. Its a small city, and there aren't many rivers in AZ besides the Gila and the Colorado. I think Intel is branching out!
Actually,
I like the book "Forever Peace", by Joe Haldeman the best. Remote control "soldier boy" super robots controlled by nuerally "jacked in" people (i.e., brain shunt, think of computer hook up to brain from back of neck, sort of Ender's Game style). Complete immersion of reality for the person jacked in, except with incredible power. Joe Haldeman isn't a hack writer either, he's won a Hugo, and is considered more or less one of the SF Masters. It's full of insight in to the human condition, and war. Great read if you are interested in the morality of remote control war.
To give you some flavor: The main character is a physicist on his off hours when he isn't jacked in. He finds evidence of something that may kill everybody, but is not sure he wants to do anything about it, because he is sometimes desperately suicidal. He has to deal with his own will to survive, the taking of other's lives, love, and the guilt of killing and death.
Now go read it!
Reality check: The source code for modern linux probably doesn't share but a couple lines of code from the 386 designed days. Nowadays Linux is designed for running on many, many different platforms, and definitely not for a 386s. Its designed to be flexible and scalable.
Second: If you "start from scratch" you are destined to repeat many mistakes. It is smart to leverage existing source code if it can be adapted to your uses. Due to Linux's design (see first paragraph), it can be used in PDAs, and is therefore a viable and attractive solution. Other larger copmpanies use Linux in PDAs (such as Sharp and Compaq), do you think they are stupid too?
As far as usability, that doesn't have a damn thing to do with the kernel, that has to do with the applications in the user space. Each PDA company would have to write most of their own anyway (beside using Opera for instance, which is better than IE for PDAs actually), so you can make them plenty usable.
Dude,
I'm sure you could have just went and found some before i18N libraries somewhere. I'd bet they are all archived. Why reinvent the wheel??
How is the linux support for ata133 interfaces??
Screw that. I'll be using them for remotely telemetered scientific equipment. It's a dream come true. No more having to rely on batteries (Which generally go bad if you let them run dead. I hate buying new batteries.) No more solar panels. Just stick a big 'ol bottle of hydrogen on a big 'ol fuel cell, and let er go. Just visity every month to pick up the data and change the hydrogen if necessary. Power systems are always the weak link, and the vagaries of the sun, and the inherent weak natures of batteries are the worst part of it. As for cost.... for most big scientific experiments, you're paying 100 of thousands of dollars, I think several thousand+ for reliable and reusable energy sources should be negligible.
Trust me, there are many many applications that have been hotly anticipating this that have nothing to do with cars or RVs.
I hope this isn't off topic, but a segment of the government that doesn't get much spotlight is the work the USGS does. Here's a great example. The USGS does a great job for the country (whether or not you like the big brother mentality of this article). They monitor stream flow, mineral resources, earthquake activiey, etc.
/. community will get in an uproar when NASA gets its huge budget cut, but I would make the case you should all be aware of the great work the USGS does, and maybe support their great silent works.
I use to work for the USGS and they have had their budget cut year after year. I don't think they'll do too well under the Bush administration either. One of the things they were really working on when I left them was public relations. The USGS does alot for you all, whether you know it or not. Everyone in the
No office suite is very good yet. As soon as one pokes its head out from the others with the stablity and features necessary, then it will probably be adopted as more or less "standard" (although it could be that we get more than one, which is probably fine). RedHat should not adopt any office suite as standard, because that would interfere with the evolution and natural selection of the best office suite. Just wait a little bit, and things will sort themselves out. Same is true for the web browser (konqueror really is pretty good, and Mozilla/gecko is getting better all the time). I've seen the cries of "X-windows doesn't do 3-D", and "we don't support USB", and "the kernel doesn't scale well", etc., etc..... the point is we always seem to get there. The same is true of office suites. We have several serious contenders now. Just let them evolve. In a year, we'll have a serious contender to MS Office.
Actually, there _are_ regulations about junk mail.
Go to junkbusters.com and check it out.
They have convenient forms to fill out and print
to people who hold databases on addresses for you,
etc. They are required to remove you if you
ask. Also works for phone calls, etc.
They also make a web proxy which blocks cookies
and banner ads etc. Well worth the browse:
http://www.junkbusters.com/
They are nonprofit, etc.
Maybe somebody there has freakin' clue! I might actually have to watch this show. Go to their site site , then their "988.2" alt database section. Then for instance go to the "988.28" white hat/black hat section. (It's all sort of a weird flash site, you'll have to wade through it).
;-)
Check out these links there:
The Hacker Quarterly (i.e., 2600)
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Freedom Downtime (free Kevin page)
Attrition.org
There are even others. All and all actually interesting links. This leads me to a question:
 
WHICH ONE OF YOU BASTARDS HAS STARTED INFORMING ON US TO HOLLYWOOD!! YOU HAVE SOME ANSWERING TO DO!!
Seriously, if they actually are seeking the advice of computer geeks instead of graphic designers, this show might be sort of cool, in a crappy hollywood sort of way. Anybody seen it?
who made the weird theme for [gnome|windowmaker]?
I'm a regular user of both Solaris and Linux for scientific applications.
I don't see why anyone would want to use Linux for Solaris. In the future I think we will be using mostly big multiprocessor x86 machines running Linux, with workstations being PCs running linux. Solaris boxes will be relagated to the really large multiprocessor machines, and the ocassional one around for legacy apps.
This is because I in general find Linux much more pleasing to work with. The gnu utilities are in general, far superior. KDE/Gnome beats the crap of CDE any day of the week. The ability of Linux to work in a heterogenous environment (i.e., so easily work with smb shares, nfs, etc.) is great.
I find Solaris, while not unpleasant to use, definitely not as pleasing on a day to day basis. I am also amazed at how poorly it performs sometimes. I know Solaris is supposed to perform well, and I just don't understand it. I do operations on fairly fast hardware, such as removing many files, etc., that I _know_ my little linux box could do faster. I don't administer the Solaris boxen though, so it could be our sysadmin just doesn't know how to set them up efficiently? I don't know.
I would greatly look forward to running Linux on them instead. Unfortunately, the only reason I'm not doing research on a x86 box is that many of the programs, libraries etc. I use in my research are Solaris specific. They aren't ported to Linux yet. However, this is changing quickly, and I actually only need one more vendor to support linux and I can drop Solaris. Its ironic, because in every other way, the application base for Linux kicks the crap out of Solaris. Running windows emulators can even get me Windows apps (for those damn word attachments etc.).
I recently set up a little linux farm for a colleague of mine who is starting up a lab at a major university. He had previously used no other Unix except solaris. I set him up personal linux work stations, and a solaris enterprise for the main number crunching. His statement after using it for a week was "I love it. Anybody else who isn't using this setup for research is stupid." He now has colleagues interested in using a similar setups.
My analysis, as far as the world of science is concerned, is that Sun is in big trouble. I can get pretty impressive PCs nowadays. The workstations and servers of the future will be running Linux and fast/big PCs. Sun will be relegated to the very high end, big multiprocessor machines, although people are gradually going beowulf too.....
Sun has a little breating room until Linux can get better SMP support for many processors, the journaling file systems become more robust, PC hardware becomes larger scale (Can you even easily get, say a 4 or 8 processor PC?), and more applications kick in. After that, I forsee Sun and Solaris getting dropped like a hot rock.
Anyway, just my take on it.
Big tall idols to my mythic gods should populate my workspace. There should be plenty of altars for sacrifice, and nice gutters for the blood to run down when things get too hectic. After a hard day coding, there's nothing like ripping out the heart of some of the pathetic management. I would also appreciate a survivor-like central meeting place where all can gather to vote people off the island.
Oh.. and free sodas, windows and skylights, as well as alot of work space.