Within the amateur and professional astronomy circles there is a fairly wide known and standard method of reporting astronomical stuff (see http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/cbat.html )
Many deepsky objects (galaxies, nebulae, star clusters) become "well known friends" by amateur astronomers. For example, when ever I'm out observing I will usually do a quick peek at M13 in Hercules, M81, M82 in Ursa Major, or parts of the Veil nebulae in Cygnus when they are visible (just to name a few). I suspect if there was a new supernova in M81 or M82, there is a chance that I would "catch it" by noticing something "odd" (think of it like noticing a new pimple on a friends face). Once something "odd" is noticed, the next step would be to check recent and older photographs of that region. If it's suspected to be "new" then the information is submitted to the IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams according to the instructions listed above. Usually the next step that happens is that the pros might get involved to verify the finding.
There are "rules" on who discovers the object, based mainly on the chronological time that IAU receives the information. Co-discovery of the same object can happen, usually the cut-off is when the IAU sends out the notice that there is a potential new object. In other words, say that I notice a new brightness in M81, I record the information and at 10:15 GMT send it in to the IAU CBAT. Someone else also notices the same object and sends in the information at 10:30 GMT. There is a CBAT notice sent out to subscribers at 10:35 GMT. Any observation after 10:35 would not be considered a discovery.
BTW if you go out to http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/RecentSupernovae.html and look for 2008ha, you will find that there where 2 other people who are listed as discoverers of the same supernova, and it looks like Caroline Moore has been "working" with the same folks because she is also listed with at least one of them on two other recent supernova discoveries.
The fact is, there is an enormous base of existing tested FORTRAN code that is still in use and still being developed within the scientific community. The issue is not simply writing new code in a newer language, the problem is setting up a new tested base in the new language.
Lets say that you are working on a project to evaluate the effects of theoretical gravity waves through a nebulae. You have a choice
Use 3 college interns to modify some code that you have been working on using a library of subroutines that have you and your prior researchers have been building up and using over the last 40 years
-or- Use 3 college interns to write new code from scratch in a new language that the compiler/interpreter was just released 2 years ago.
And oh, you have to publish results in 2 months in order to get your next NSF grant.
Yes, the new code might be all object orienty, and you can use the latest IDE to develop in, and you can hire a bunch of fresh young (cheap) grad students that are familiar with the latest python, perl, C#, etc. development and they can bang out thousands of lines of code a day. But are you really really sure that that freshly written eigenvalue routine produces the correct result? Has that new compiler been tested on the super-computer you have limited access to, can it even take advantage of all the power of that system?
I'm not saying that FORTRAN compilers are not bug free, but I suspect that the chances of finding a basic compiler or runtime library bug is lower in FORTRAN then in say Perl 6.
A couple of years ago my son spent some time doing some intern coding work for a private atmospheric research group. The group was/is doing bleeding edge research. My son was helping out one of the researchers in updating code that handled 2D models to 3D models. All the code was in FORTRAN and there was no desire to move away from it.
The problem isn't only in the US government. It's also in the IT (and probably many other) industries. In the rush to make more profit, the people who know how things really work under the covers are let go (because that component is working well enough). In the meantime there is a huge amount of new work sitting on top of of all this old stuff. As long as nothing under the cover breaks everything is just fine.
Each state chose a number of electors equal to the number of congress people that state had. Each state, then, got at least three electors (two Senators and at least one Representative). Electors may not be an employee or elected representative of the Federal Government. Each state was allowed to otherwise choose whomever they wish to be the Electors for that state.
Today, Electors are chosen by popular election, but the Constitution does not mandate a popular election. The 14th Amendment does mention the choosing of Electors, but is relevant only when Electors are elected by popular vote. There is similar mention in the 24th Amendment. In other words, Electors could be appointed by a state's legislature, or the legislature could empower the governor to choose electors. In some cases, state law allows for such appointments if the popular vote cannot be used to determine a winner, such as if election results are contested up to federally-mandated deadlines.
No... the Electoral college votes are supposed to represent the individual state. The fact that the state legislatures have delegated the selection to the people is a state choice.
Using Wikipedia and looking at the US population values:
Without the Electoral College the popular vote would go to: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego and Dallas. The total of these (around 238 million) are over 70% of the total US population (around 300 million)
The populations of: Wyoming (~500,000), South Dakota (~800,000), North Dakota (~600,000) and Iowa (~3,000,000) would not equal the population of New York City (~8,000,000).
If this trends continues, Iowa and any "small state" will never see a presidential candidate campaign again, they would be too small and their vote would no longer matter anymore.
Remember that under the US Constitution, the appointment of the President is by the States (via the appointment of the electors)
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.-- Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 - US Constitution
... said company founder Elon Musk, who also announced that he will assume the role of chief executive officer. He replaces Ze'ev Drori, who becomes vice chairman and continues as a board member.
Basically, the "URL" that they are using is nothing more then a list of indexes into a Random Number Table, and each element of the RNT is 128k bytes and the values of that table are distributed.
Say that you have a simplified RNT of 8 values:
Index; Seed; Value
1; 5; 10
2; 32; 9
3; 99; 13
4; 86; 17
5; 42; 11
6; 12; 7
7; 18; 23
8; 4; 3
Assume that the formula is simple addition, and your original text is "20". You can generate the following URL's;
2;5
1;6;8
4;8 ...
However, if you publish the RNG, you can change the URL to simply be the seed values and you can compute the individual RNT value. This would simplify the whole system because you then do not need to transmit any blocks of 128k data.
From a purely security policy viewpoint, it's not "would you do something", but "could you do something".
Don't take it personally. Especially if you are leaving a large company.
So.. what to do with your new free time? If you really want to not burn a bridge, spend the time documenting all the little ins and outs of the stuff you really think is important, or that you have had some nagging concerning about. Find out who will be picking up your tasks, introduce them to the folks that you interact with on a routine basis. If you have direct interaction with end users, let your replacement know which end users requires a little more attention, or have difficulty with things. Give your replacement(s) a little "tour" of the more obscure tasks that you do. All systems have little quirks, transfer those bits of knowledge. Any special configurations, unusual setups, etc.
Why would you want to do this. Because it's a professional way to respond. And it is possible that years later it might come back to you. As a personal antidote, when I left my first company (after 13 years), I didn't burn any bridges. They let me keep my system authorities, but what I did was to set up a new account for my replacement and with my replacement looking over my shoulder I started to remove my old accounts, just to make sure that things would still work. I worked closely with my replacement in "cleaning up" all the little hooks that my old admin accounts had and made sure that he had the same access that I did. A few years later in the new company, I was laid off as part of a large downsizing - several hundred people (everyone was literally given notice, told not to touch any system, make one phone call, grab your personal stuff and escorted out of the building - in a very unprofessional manner). My old manager from the original company contacted me and asked if I was part of the downsizing and let me know that "there is a desk here if you need it". (As a final note in this, about 6, 7 months after I was laid off, I received a call from the company that laid me off.. asking for my skills again.. my response was "hell hasn't frozen over yet") -- so the karma works both ways..
Actually... if you want to go back one step further, one of the major reasons why these types of exploits exist is because of the default behavior of many of the C library (and the underlying operating system API).
In a "different" world, the default behavior for a failed system API call would cause the operating system to terminate the application. To override this behavior, the application author would have to explicitly tell the system API that it would handle the error condition.
The current method rewards the programmer for not adding the additional required code to handle an error. The reward is a simple, runnable, program, but one that contains a hidden time bomb just waiting for the right error condition.
The exception (catch/try) model is another way to handle these types of errors, if the system APIs would throw the exceptions.
The problem however that the cat is out of the bag so to speak. The major systems out there (Windows, Unix, Linux) have been built with a basic assumption that coders are performing due diligence by programming defensively.
Yes.. the Dosadi story itself works fairly well as a stand-alone story and it makes a lot of sense by itself. But to really savior who Jorg really is...
The prior stories helps in understanding
Why Jorg was selected for the task
The statement that Jorg is more Gowachin then a Gowachin
And why Fannie-Mae was so willing to help Jorg out.
Anyway... just my humble opinion of the story. As I said.. Jorg is one of my favorite sci-fi story characters.
But back to the original statement.. Yes -- I would love to see a well done version of the "Dosadi Experiment" on the big screen.
That would be a great movie if they could pull it off...
The character Jorg X McKie is one of my favorite story characters.
First introduced in a short story "Saboteur Extraordair", then a short novel, "Whipping Star" and finally The Dosadi Experiment.
I think in order to do the Dosadi Experiment, elements of from these two other works would have to be introduced. The first short story establishes the necessary back story for Jorg, the second establishes his relationship to the Calebans and why he is so trusted by them.
Actually I felt just the opposite...
I've been a long time Herbert fan, and remember vividly waiting for the Dune movie to come out. Yes -- I was one of those folks that stood in line at midnight for the first showing in the area.
I knew from the start that it was going to be a tough job transferring the book to film, and I was ready for artistic license with the story line.
However... I wanted to walk out of that movie. From the opening to about the point where Paul and Jessica are left out in the desert I was about fine. I had a lot of issues with the weirding device.. but they needed some sort of hook to use.. but as the movie progressed, it got to such an absurd point about it that I felt that the spirit of the story was being left further and further behind, to the point that I felt that this was not even close to the story that I had spent so much time reading.
The SciFi channel mini-series while lacking the visual feel of the Lynch movie, I felt stayed more in tune with the spirit of the Dune series.
The U.S. Constitution, for example, grants basic rights which are then upheld by the courts. No... The U.S. Constitution does not grant rights. It works the other way around. The government only has those powers granted to it by the constitution.
The two amendment's that spell this out are:
Amendment 9 - Construction of Constitution. Ratified on 12/15/1791.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified on 12/15/1791.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
As for the responsibility of the SCOTUS..
It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court to ensure that the representatives never override the intent of the basic rights granted by the Constitution In the U.S. Constituion there is no spelled out responsibility of the SCOTUS to perform a constitutional review of a law, however there was a very early case (Marbury v. Madison - 1803) in which then chief justice John Marshall claimed the power of judicial review.
Okay.. basically slide rules work on the simple principle of logrithms and the fact that multiplication of two numbers can be done by simply adding the log the two numbers and then performing the inverse log on the result
x*y=z
is done by:
log(x) + log(y) -> log(z)
And the fact that you can determine the log of values via tables.
So.. lets say you want to do 2 x 4. You adjust the slideruler so that the "1" from the C scale is aligned with the "2" on the D scale. Now you have the entire multiplication table for 2 x X. Now without resliding anything, simply find the "4" on the C scale and read the answer on "D" scale. If you want to do 2 x 3, don't adjust anything, simply find the "3" on the C scale and read the answer again on the "D" scale.
Division is done in reverse. To divide 8 by 4, adjust the slide rule so that the 4 on the C scale is aligned with the 8 on the D scale and read your answer by finding the 1 on the C scale.
Due to the nature of the beast you will find that you have to "flip" the scales around in order to perform some calculations. Circular slide rules "solved" this problem.
Now you are probably asking how do I multiply 200 by 4. Well.. this is where you have to start using your noggin. You have to mentally keep track of the magnitude of the equation and reduce it to: 200 x 4 = 100 x 2 x 4, then simply remember the magnitude (the 100) and do the 2x4.
You will also have to keep track of number of significant digits
I've been playing around with astronomy for almost 40 years, and it was only in the last couple of years that I decided to try astrophotography.
My visual set up is a 10" f/4.5 Meade Newtonian and a home brew 8" f/6 Newtonian. I never really got the "hang" of star hopping with a Dob, having grown up with German equatorial mounts (surprising what one can do with a couple of well placed pipe fittings).
I agree, astrophotography can be expensive to get into. While you can do webcam for some stuff (basically you end up making a movie of the object then combine all the frames (throwing out the less desirable ones -- for example see: registax), it's still can get expensive.
To get into full blown astrophotography you can break down the cost as: 1/3 for the mount 1/3 for the scope and 1/3 for the camera. I tried to go cheap my first round, and it was an exercise in frustration. Currently my set up is around $10,000, and I'm still learning.
But for what it sounds like, go simple. If you are really committed to it, avoid the GOTO scopes - you will thank yourself later. Get as much aperture as you can afford, get a simple mount (a dobsonion setup is a good start once you are determined to spend some money). Get familiar with the skis (this is the key reason for not using a GOTO scope). Find out what you like to view. Is it planets?, Deep Sky Objects (DSO's); galaxies, nebula's, star clusters? Once you've determined that and if you are still interested in doing astrophotography then you can tune the type of telescope to the type of objects you want to image.
If/when you decide to get into astrophotograph, if you have a dark enough sky and the property, build a little observatory (a rolloff is fairly simple). Get a good equatorial mount and build up from there.
IC405 I took this image from the Pawnee Grasslands about 100 miles north of Denver, CO. I used a Takahashi TOA 130 telescope (a 5" refractor) with focal reducer (FL 860mm f/5.73), on a Losmandy G11 mount, ST-4 autoguider, and a Canon 20Da digital SLR. It is two 10 minute exposures at ISO 400, aligned, stacked, and processed using GIMP.
You see the key word is radioactive. reptilian overlords. If birds are the last remnant of dinosaurs.. then maybe a little dose of alpha, beta and gamma would kick those crocs right to their distant cousins..
So...
I for one welcome our new radioactive reptilian *duck* overlords
Real simple experiment...
Heat your oven to 400 degrees.
Open the oven door and stick your hand in the oven but don't touch anything. Your hand will feel warm, and maybe after a bit it will become uncomfortable.
Close the oven door, let the inside temperature come back up to 400 degrees.
Open the oven door and grab a hold of the oven rack. Bet you will wish that you had some oven mitts on.
Nothing new here... -or- history repeats itself
on
Virtual Containerization
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Since the late 60's IBM's mainframe VM operating system has been available. It too went through the same phases that is happening now with VMWare, xen, etc. Initially VM was used for hosting multiple guest systems (a good history -> VM and the VM community, past present, and future - pdf warning), but quickly a small project (Cambridge Monitoring System - CMS) became an integral part of VM. CP provided the virtualization and CMS provided a simple single user operating system platform.
Within a VM system, one will now find three types of systems running in the virtual machines.
Guest systems, such as Linux, z/OS, z/VSE, or even z/VM
General users using CMS in a PC like environment (sorry no GUI's, and yes there are arcane references to card punches, readers, etc. -- but question -- why does linux still have TTYs?). In the heyday before PC's, CMS provided an excellent end user environment for development, as well as a general computing platform.
And finally Service Virtual Machines (SVMs).
It is these Service Virtual Machines that equate to the topic of the original post. A SVM usually provides one specific function, and while there may be interdependence between SVMs (for example the TCPIP SVM that provides the TCP/IP stack and each of the individual TCP/IP services), they are pretty much isolated from each other. A failure in a single SVM, while disruptive, usually doesn't impact the whole system.
One of the first SVM's was the Remote Spooling Communication Subsystem (or RSCS). This service allowed two VM systems to be linked together via some sort of communication link -- think UUCP.
The power of SVM's is in the synergy between the Hypervisor system, and a light weight platform for implementing services. The light weight platform itself doesn't provide much in terms of services. There is no TCP/IP stack, no "log in" facility (only relying on the base virtual machine login console), and maybe not even any paging memory (letting the base VM system manage a huge address space). Instead a light weight platform will provide a robust file system, memory management, and task/program management. In IBM's z/VM product, CMS is an example of a light weight platform. The Group Control System (GCS) is another example (GCS was initially introduced to provide a platform to support VTAM - which was ported from MVS).
Part of the synergy between between the Hypervisor and the SVMs is that the Hypervisor needs to provide a fast, low overhead intra-virtual machine communication path that is not built upon the TCP/IP stack. In otherwords the communication between two virtual machines should not require that each virtual machine contain it's own TCP/IP stack with it's own IP address. Think more along the lines of using the IPC or PIPE model between the SVMs.
Since the SVM itself is not a full suite of services, maintenance and administration is done via meta-administration, in otherwords you maintain the SVM service from outside the SVM itself. There is no need to "log into" the SVM to make changes. Instead of the SVM providing a sys-log facility, a common sys-log facility is shared among all the SVM's. Instead of each SVM doing paging, simply define the virtual machine size to meet the storage requirements of the application, and let the Hypervisor manage the real storage and paging.
Maybe a good analogy would be taking a Linux kernel and implementing a service via using the init= parameter in the kernel to invoke a simple set up (mounting the disks) and running just the code needed to perform the service. Communication for other services would be provided via hypervisor PIPEs between the different SVM's. So one would have a TCP/IP SVM that provides the TCP/IP network stack to the outside world. A web server SVM that provides just the HTTP protocol and base set of applications, using a hypervisor PIPE to talk to the TCP/IP stack. Within the web server SVM, would use hypervisor PIPEs to talk to the individual application SVMs.
The idea of computer viruses are much older then even 1979.
Two stories come to mine "The Adolescence of P1" - 1977, "The ShockWave Rider" 1975, both which describe the concept of malicious, unwanted computer programs that infect other systems.
While these books describe concepts, they were more then likely based on then current discussions in the computer world.
Electronic voting benefits mainly the media. There really is not any real reason to have to produce the results of an election within hours after the polls close, except to support the media hype surrounding the election.
The ease of a voting system should not be directed towards the "counters", but towards the person voting and the people who need to be able to verify the counts during a dispute.
Use a simple paper ballot that the voter fills out (with maybe a mechanical/electronic assistance if needed), and places into a ballot box. The voter should not be able to walk out the door with any thing that can prove how they voted, as this can lead to selling votes or force someone to vote in a certain fashion (think of your boss saying that if you want to keep your job, you had to vote for X and bring in the proof).
Electronically/mechanically process the paper ballot to produce the counts. If there is a dispute the paper ballots are verified by hand counting.
The counting system should make a first pass through the ballots and perform a simple pass/fail on each ballot. Any ballot that fails goes to a hand count bin. The machine should be able to perform this "sorting" without human intervention (I believe that my local district's machines either require intervention with each failed scan, or simply indicates that there were failed scans within a batch).
Slashdot Mirror
Within the amateur and professional astronomy circles there is a fairly wide known and standard method of reporting astronomical stuff (see http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/cbat.html )
Many deepsky objects (galaxies, nebulae, star clusters) become "well known friends" by amateur astronomers. For example, when ever I'm out observing I will usually do a quick peek at M13 in Hercules, M81, M82 in Ursa Major, or parts of the Veil nebulae in Cygnus when they are visible (just to name a few). I suspect if there was a new supernova in M81 or M82, there is a chance that I would "catch it" by noticing something "odd" (think of it like noticing a new pimple on a friends face). Once something "odd" is noticed, the next step would be to check recent and older photographs of that region. If it's suspected to be "new" then the information is submitted to the IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams according to the instructions listed above. Usually the next step that happens is that the pros might get involved to verify the finding.
There are "rules" on who discovers the object, based mainly on the chronological time that IAU receives the information. Co-discovery of the same object can happen, usually the cut-off is when the IAU sends out the notice that there is a potential new object. In other words, say that I notice a new brightness in M81, I record the information and at 10:15 GMT send it in to the IAU CBAT. Someone else also notices the same object and sends in the information at 10:30 GMT. There is a CBAT notice sent out to subscribers at 10:35 GMT. Any observation after 10:35 would not be considered a discovery.
BTW if you go out to http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/RecentSupernovae.html and look for 2008ha, you will find that there where 2 other people who are listed as discoverers of the same supernova, and it looks like Caroline Moore has been "working" with the same folks because she is also listed with at least one of them on two other recent supernova discoveries.
Lets say that you are working on a project to evaluate the effects of theoretical gravity waves through a nebulae. You have a choice
And oh, you have to publish results in 2 months in order to get your next NSF grant.
Yes, the new code might be all object orienty, and you can use the latest IDE to develop in, and you can hire a bunch of fresh young (cheap) grad students that are familiar with the latest python, perl, C#, etc. development and they can bang out thousands of lines of code a day. But are you really really sure that that freshly written eigenvalue routine produces the correct result? Has that new compiler been tested on the super-computer you have limited access to, can it even take advantage of all the power of that system?
I'm not saying that FORTRAN compilers are not bug free, but I suspect that the chances of finding a basic compiler or runtime library bug is lower in FORTRAN then in say Perl 6.
A couple of years ago my son spent some time doing some intern coding work for a private atmospheric research group. The group was/is doing bleeding edge research. My son was helping out one of the researchers in updating code that handled 2D models to 3D models. All the code was in FORTRAN and there was no desire to move away from it.
The problem isn't only in the US government. It's also in the IT (and probably many other) industries. In the rush to make more profit, the people who know how things really work under the covers are let go (because that component is working well enough). In the meantime there is a huge amount of new work sitting on top of of all this old stuff. As long as nothing under the cover breaks everything is just fine.
Each state chose a number of electors equal to the number of congress people that state had. Each state, then, got at least three electors (two Senators and at least one Representative). Electors may not be an employee or elected representative of the Federal Government. Each state was allowed to otherwise choose whomever they wish to be the Electors for that state. Today, Electors are chosen by popular election, but the Constitution does not mandate a popular election. The 14th Amendment does mention the choosing of Electors, but is relevant only when Electors are elected by popular vote. There is similar mention in the 24th Amendment. In other words, Electors could be appointed by a state's legislature, or the legislature could empower the governor to choose electors. In some cases, state law allows for such appointments if the popular vote cannot be used to determine a winner, such as if election results are contested up to federally-mandated deadlines.
No... the Electoral college votes are supposed to represent the individual state. The fact that the state legislatures have delegated the selection to the people is a state choice.
Without the Electoral College the popular vote would go to: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego and Dallas. The total of these (around 238 million) are over 70% of the total US population (around 300 million)
The populations of: Wyoming (~500,000), South Dakota (~800,000), North Dakota (~600,000) and Iowa (~3,000,000) would not equal the population of New York City (~8,000,000).
If this trends continues, Iowa and any "small state" will never see a presidential candidate campaign again, they would be too small and their vote would no longer matter anymore.
Remember that under the US Constitution, the appointment of the President is by the States (via the appointment of the electors)
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.-- Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 - US Constitution
... said company founder Elon Musk, who also announced that he will assume the role of chief executive officer. He replaces Ze'ev Drori, who becomes vice chairman and continues as a board member.
Looks like the old CEO is still there...
Basically, the "URL" that they are using is nothing more then a list of indexes into a Random Number Table, and each element of the RNT is 128k bytes and the values of that table are distributed.
Say that you have a simplified RNT of 8 values:
Index; Seed; Value
1; 5; 10
2; 32; 9
3; 99; 13
4; 86; 17
5; 42; 11
6; 12; 7
7; 18; 23
8; 4; 3
Assume that the formula is simple addition, and your original text is "20". You can generate the following URL's;
...
2;5
1;6;8
4;8
However, if you publish the RNG, you can change the URL to simply be the seed values and you can compute the individual RNT value. This would simplify the whole system because you then do not need to transmit any blocks of 128k data.
Don't take it personally. Especially if you are leaving a large company.
So.. what to do with your new free time? If you really want to not burn a bridge, spend the time documenting all the little ins and outs of the stuff you really think is important, or that you have had some nagging concerning about. Find out who will be picking up your tasks, introduce them to the folks that you interact with on a routine basis. If you have direct interaction with end users, let your replacement know which end users requires a little more attention, or have difficulty with things. Give your replacement(s) a little "tour" of the more obscure tasks that you do. All systems have little quirks, transfer those bits of knowledge. Any special configurations, unusual setups, etc.
Why would you want to do this. Because it's a professional way to respond. And it is possible that years later it might come back to you. As a personal antidote, when I left my first company (after 13 years), I didn't burn any bridges. They let me keep my system authorities, but what I did was to set up a new account for my replacement and with my replacement looking over my shoulder I started to remove my old accounts, just to make sure that things would still work. I worked closely with my replacement in "cleaning up" all the little hooks that my old admin accounts had and made sure that he had the same access that I did. A few years later in the new company, I was laid off as part of a large downsizing - several hundred people (everyone was literally given notice, told not to touch any system, make one phone call, grab your personal stuff and escorted out of the building - in a very unprofessional manner). My old manager from the original company contacted me and asked if I was part of the downsizing and let me know that "there is a desk here if you need it". (As a final note in this, about 6, 7 months after I was laid off, I received a call from the company that laid me off.. asking for my skills again.. my response was "hell hasn't frozen over yet") -- so the karma works both ways..
In a "different" world, the default behavior for a failed system API call would cause the operating system to terminate the application. To override this behavior, the application author would have to explicitly tell the system API that it would handle the error condition.
The current method rewards the programmer for not adding the additional required code to handle an error. The reward is a simple, runnable, program, but one that contains a hidden time bomb just waiting for the right error condition.
The exception (catch/try) model is another way to handle these types of errors, if the system APIs would throw the exceptions.
The problem however that the cat is out of the bag so to speak. The major systems out there (Windows, Unix, Linux) have been built with a basic assumption that coders are performing due diligence by programming defensively.
The prior stories helps in understanding
Anyway... just my humble opinion of the story. As I said.. Jorg is one of my favorite sci-fi story characters.
But back to the original statement.. Yes -- I would love to see a well done version of the "Dosadi Experiment" on the big screen.
That would be a great movie if they could pull it off...
The character Jorg X McKie is one of my favorite story characters.
First introduced in a short story "Saboteur Extraordair", then a short novel, "Whipping Star" and finally The Dosadi Experiment.
I think in order to do the Dosadi Experiment, elements of from these two other works would have to be introduced. The first short story establishes the necessary back story for Jorg, the second establishes his relationship to the Calebans and why he is so trusted by them.
Actually I felt just the opposite... I've been a long time Herbert fan, and remember vividly waiting for the Dune movie to come out. Yes -- I was one of those folks that stood in line at midnight for the first showing in the area. I knew from the start that it was going to be a tough job transferring the book to film, and I was ready for artistic license with the story line. However... I wanted to walk out of that movie. From the opening to about the point where Paul and Jessica are left out in the desert I was about fine. I had a lot of issues with the weirding device.. but they needed some sort of hook to use.. but as the movie progressed, it got to such an absurd point about it that I felt that the spirit of the story was being left further and further behind, to the point that I felt that this was not even close to the story that I had spent so much time reading. The SciFi channel mini-series while lacking the visual feel of the Lynch movie, I felt stayed more in tune with the spirit of the Dune series.
We use a pen/paper for marking the ballots. The problem is in the machines that count them..
Just remember ... the power in voting is not with the people who cast the ballots, but with the people who are counting them.
The two amendment's that spell this out are:
Amendment 9 - Construction of Constitution. Ratified on 12/15/1791.The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified on 12/15/1791.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
As for the responsibility of the SCOTUS..
It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court to ensure that the representatives never override the intent of the basic rights granted by the Constitution In the U.S. Constituion there is no spelled out responsibility of the SCOTUS to perform a constitutional review of a law, however there was a very early case (Marbury v. Madison - 1803) in which then chief justice John Marshall claimed the power of judicial review.So.. lets say you want to do 2 x 4. You adjust the slideruler so that the "1" from the C scale is aligned with the "2" on the D scale. Now you have the entire multiplication table for 2 x X. Now without resliding anything, simply find the "4" on the C scale and read the answer on "D" scale. If you want to do 2 x 3, don't adjust anything, simply find the "3" on the C scale and read the answer again on the "D" scale.
Division is done in reverse. To divide 8 by 4, adjust the slide rule so that the 4 on the C scale is aligned with the 8 on the D scale and read your answer by finding the 1 on the C scale.
Due to the nature of the beast you will find that you have to "flip" the scales around in order to perform some calculations. Circular slide rules "solved" this problem.
Now you are probably asking how do I multiply 200 by 4. Well.. this is where you have to start using your noggin. You have to mentally keep track of the magnitude of the equation and reduce it to: 200 x 4 = 100 x 2 x 4, then simply remember the magnitude (the 100) and do the 2x4.
You will also have to keep track of number of significant digits
Hope that helps
I've been playing around with astronomy for almost 40 years, and it was only in the last couple of years that I decided to try astrophotography.
My visual set up is a 10" f/4.5 Meade Newtonian and a home brew 8" f/6 Newtonian. I never really got the "hang" of star hopping with a Dob, having grown up with German equatorial mounts (surprising what one can do with a couple of well placed pipe fittings).
To get into full blown astrophotography you can break down the cost as: 1/3 for the mount 1/3 for the scope and 1/3 for the camera. I tried to go cheap my first round, and it was an exercise in frustration. Currently my set up is around $10,000, and I'm still learning.
But for what it sounds like, go simple. If you are really committed to it, avoid the GOTO scopes - you will thank yourself later. Get as much aperture as you can afford, get a simple mount (a dobsonion setup is a good start once you are determined to spend some money). Get familiar with the skis (this is the key reason for not using a GOTO scope). Find out what you like to view. Is it planets?, Deep Sky Objects (DSO's); galaxies, nebula's, star clusters? Once you've determined that and if you are still interested in doing astrophotography then you can tune the type of telescope to the type of objects you want to image.
If/when you decide to get into astrophotograph, if you have a dark enough sky and the property, build a little observatory (a rolloff is fairly simple). Get a good equatorial mount and build up from there.
IC405 I took this image from the Pawnee Grasslands about 100 miles north of Denver, CO. I used a Takahashi TOA 130 telescope (a 5" refractor) with focal reducer (FL 860mm f/5.73), on a Losmandy G11 mount, ST-4 autoguider, and a Canon 20Da digital SLR. It is two 10 minute exposures at ISO 400, aligned, stacked, and processed using GIMP.
You see the key word is radioactive. reptilian overlords. If birds are the last remnant of dinosaurs.. then maybe a little dose of alpha, beta and gamma would kick those crocs right to their distant cousins..
So...
I for one welcome our new radioactive reptilian *duck* overlords
Real simple experiment... Heat your oven to 400 degrees. Open the oven door and stick your hand in the oven but don't touch anything. Your hand will feel warm, and maybe after a bit it will become uncomfortable. Close the oven door, let the inside temperature come back up to 400 degrees. Open the oven door and grab a hold of the oven rack. Bet you will wish that you had some oven mitts on.
Within a VM system, one will now find three types of systems running in the virtual machines.
It is these Service Virtual Machines that equate to the topic of the original post. A SVM usually provides one specific function, and while there may be interdependence between SVMs (for example the TCPIP SVM that provides the TCP/IP stack and each of the individual TCP/IP services), they are pretty much isolated from each other. A failure in a single SVM, while disruptive, usually doesn't impact the whole system.
One of the first SVM's was the Remote Spooling Communication Subsystem (or RSCS). This service allowed two VM systems to be linked together via some sort of communication link -- think UUCP.
The power of SVM's is in the synergy between the Hypervisor system, and a light weight platform for implementing services. The light weight platform itself doesn't provide much in terms of services. There is no TCP/IP stack, no "log in" facility (only relying on the base virtual machine login console), and maybe not even any paging memory (letting the base VM system manage a huge address space). Instead a light weight platform will provide a robust file system, memory management, and task/program management. In IBM's z/VM product, CMS is an example of a light weight platform. The Group Control System (GCS) is another example (GCS was initially introduced to provide a platform to support VTAM - which was ported from MVS).
Part of the synergy between between the Hypervisor and the SVMs is that the Hypervisor needs to provide a fast, low overhead intra-virtual machine communication path that is not built upon the TCP/IP stack. In otherwords the communication between two virtual machines should not require that each virtual machine contain it's own TCP/IP stack with it's own IP address. Think more along the lines of using the IPC or PIPE model between the SVMs.
Since the SVM itself is not a full suite of services, maintenance and administration is done via meta-administration, in otherwords you maintain the SVM service from outside the SVM itself. There is no need to "log into" the SVM to make changes. Instead of the SVM providing a sys-log facility, a common sys-log facility is shared among all the SVM's. Instead of each SVM doing paging, simply define the virtual machine size to meet the storage requirements of the application, and let the Hypervisor manage the real storage and paging.
Maybe a good analogy would be taking a Linux kernel and implementing a service via using the init= parameter in the kernel to invoke a simple set up (mounting the disks) and running just the code needed to perform the service. Communication for other services would be provided via hypervisor PIPEs between the different SVM's. So one would have a TCP/IP SVM that provides the TCP/IP network stack to the outside world. A web server SVM that provides just the HTTP protocol and base set of applications, using a hypervisor PIPE to talk to the TCP/IP stack. Within the web server SVM, would use hypervisor PIPEs to talk to the individual application SVMs.
The idea of computer viruses are much older then even 1979. Two stories come to mine "The Adolescence of P1" - 1977, "The ShockWave Rider" 1975, both which describe the concept of malicious, unwanted computer programs that infect other systems. While these books describe concepts, they were more then likely based on then current discussions in the computer world.
Very dated now, but they did at least get some things right. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/
Electronic voting benefits mainly the media. There really is not any real reason to have to produce the results of an election within hours after the polls close, except to support the media hype surrounding the election.
The ease of a voting system should not be directed towards the "counters", but towards the person voting and the people who need to be able to verify the counts during a dispute.
Use a simple paper ballot that the voter fills out (with maybe a mechanical/electronic assistance if needed), and places into a ballot box. The voter should not be able to walk out the door with any thing that can prove how they voted, as this can lead to selling votes or force someone to vote in a certain fashion (think of your boss saying that if you want to keep your job, you had to vote for X and bring in the proof).
Electronically/mechanically process the paper ballot to produce the counts. If there is a dispute the paper ballots are verified by hand counting.
The counting system should make a first pass through the ballots and perform a simple pass/fail on each ballot. Any ballot that fails goes to a hand count bin. The machine should be able to perform this "sorting" without human intervention (I believe that my local district's machines either require intervention with each failed scan, or simply indicates that there were failed scans within a batch).