Thomas Gold's "The Deep Hot Biosphere" (also a book) points out that "Bacteriologists have speculated that since a large sub-group of archaebacteria - the most primitive and judged to be the most ancient bacteria - are thermophiles, this may indicate that primitive life evolved at such high temperatures in the first place (10)."
Gold doesn't restrict life to surface areas. He points out that there are plenty of pores in deep rock...and bacteria is living there and could have arisen there. This new study is considering a specific type of mineral formation around surface hot spots. I don't know how likely this material is to occur below ground, where Gold points out the environment is even more stable than around a thermal vent.
As I mentioned in another reply, from speeds you can confirm highway locations. Exits from highways show cross streets. Bends in roads also show some locations. Street names have to be entered by at least some people, or extracted from maps which might not be very accurate.
So ignore the data points which are close together during a long period. You're not particularly interested in data from an hour when you're not moving. Throw away data from periods when you're not moving or when it has been "too long" since a GPS reading.
If the data is coming from a bunch of people who are wandering around for weeks, they'll probably run through the same area several times and generate several valid data points. Even more if they keep doing it for months.
Matching the raw data to actual locations is a different problem. Let's say we start with TIGER maps. Use speeds to locate and confirm the highway locations. People who enter/exit a freeway will show where the limited number of access points are, so now the location of those intersecting streets is known (if TIGER doesn't show the ramps, you might have to record them -- easy to do that if you care). Cars which use those known streets allow correlation of TIGER locations of those streets. Turns and cross traffic show intersecting streets -- counting number of blocks from highways allows confirmation of location of all individual streets (alleys would add some confusion). Streets with curves in them allow further confirmation of locations along the street. Patterns of traffic pauses show STOP signs or traffic lights. Areas with only interpolated data hint at tree cover or tall buildings.
Do any of you have any idea how much of the planet is covered with us ?
Yes. Do the math. The entire human population of the Earth can fit in Texas, with several hundred square feet of empty space around each person. A lot more if you group families together.
Yeah, the article just says "we read it, now we're going to put it in a museum". Aren't they going to copy it to CD-ROM in a known data format? Who will have access to this data?
Indeed, I'm using similar indicators for GPS navigation so I can hear my approach while I'm driving. Direction and proximity are easily signaled.
You've all seen a similar use. Listen to the approach of the lunar shuttle to the TMA-1 base in "2001: A Space Odyssey".
And fifteen years ago I was listening to network behavior: the RF leakage from a computer or network device can produces recognizable patterns on a radio. I identified excessive directory searches in an application from the background chatter. The higher speeds of current technology makes this more difficult with simple broadcast AM/FM radios.
I also believe that Slashdot discussed Peep, the Network Auralizer which plays sounds based on network activity. But Peep is oriented toward behavior of an entire network, not of specific connections.
But their digital copier couldn't talk to its printers through the network...
Oh, you think I'm joking? There are copiers which are basically a scanner -- and they can make large numbers of copies very quickly by using several printers simultaneously.
(I don't know if that was actually a problem in this situation)
The odd thing is mention of what the researcher doing being "compute-intensive". That should slow down its use of the network, if the processor has work to do.
Perhaps the researcher was actually
monitoring the network so he had to look at the live network -- but perhaps something about the monitoring affected the network.
Maybe he was running all network traffic through a device which couldn't quite keep up with the data rate (but then network staff would have pulled it out).
Maybe he forced the routers to feed copies of all data to his equipment -- but the link to his equipment wasn't fast enough.
Maybe his monitor link worked fine, Cisco staff knew it worked fine so ignored it as a source of problems, but some quirk (writing to disk while a large data burst appeared?) happened every six hours which caused an unexpected problem in the network equipment.
Maybe he was gathering data from a maintenance program inside all PCs, so he was actually slowing down all networked PCs (or crashing some of them).
Maybe he's the president's son and the president had ordered that the research must be done.
You're playing with probabilities of failure of trains.
Don't forget that in the real world some train failures cause derailments which destroy the track which goes in the other direction.
Defensive design requires considering both probabilities and physical reality. Lightning is less likely to damage fiber than copper, but copper might be better in a very hot environment (not that I'd like to run the network of a steel mill). The chance of two identical Cisco networks failing is small, unless the failure involves behavior of Cisco equipment which even Cisco engineers can't change.
The chance of one disk failing at once is unlikely, unless you are using disks by the same manufacturer which might have been manufactured on the same day by the same machines which made identical mistakes in all the drives so all the drives have a large chance of failing at the same time.
You need a RAID controller which can handle slightly different drives, and have at least one different drive in each row. Even better if you're using a configuration where two drives by different manufacturers have whole copies of the data, so failure of two drives is not fatal.
If Linux is the solution, a Linux-powered network box is better suited to a wiring closet than a big hot PC is. In most situations, whether a router has Linux inside doesn't matter. But there may be situations where the Linux network kernel design is better or worse for the task at hand. Although if the network staff knows best Cisco and Linux, having Linux on the secondary network could mean that more staff already know two networking technologies and configuration methods.
Their network staff should be looking at all solutions. They know better than we do what their bandwidth and connectivity problems are. I only hope they don't make the same mistakes on both networks.
(I forgot to point out that one of the reasons to have a dedicated staff is to avoid having the same design mistakes done to both networks. The staff of the second network should participate in all-network meetings which discuss status and problems, but not necessarily the problem-solving meetings. If the two network staff try to solve problems independently then design errors are less likely to be duplicated. The two groups should compare their solutions so they can teach each other and perhaps find even better solutions, be aware that one solution may be better for one set of equipment, and if two solutions are about equally good then each network use their own best solution.)
I hope the "second redundant network" uses equipment by a different manufacturer and has at least one network technician whose primary duty is that network. That person's secondary duty should be to monitor the primary network and look for problems there. Someone in the primary network staff should have a secondary duty to monitor and check the backup network.
The ideal would be to actually use both networks, such as by using each on alternating weeks. This ensures that both networks can handle full normal operations and are both operational.
Slashdot Mirror
Gold doesn't restrict life to surface areas. He points out that there are plenty of pores in deep rock...and bacteria is living there and could have arisen there. This new study is considering a specific type of mineral formation around surface hot spots. I don't know how likely this material is to occur below ground, where Gold points out the environment is even more stable than around a thermal vent.
Don't need to use boats to mark canals. If the canal freezes over you'll have ice skating routes traced.
What about people who aren't sheering?
As I mentioned in another reply, from speeds you can confirm highway locations. Exits from highways show cross streets. Bends in roads also show some locations. Street names have to be entered by at least some people, or extracted from maps which might not be very accurate.
If the data is coming from a bunch of people who are wandering around for weeks, they'll probably run through the same area several times and generate several valid data points. Even more if they keep doing it for months.
Matching the raw data to actual locations is a different problem. Let's say we start with TIGER maps. Use speeds to locate and confirm the highway locations. People who enter/exit a freeway will show where the limited number of access points are, so now the location of those intersecting streets is known (if TIGER doesn't show the ramps, you might have to record them -- easy to do that if you care). Cars which use those known streets allow correlation of TIGER locations of those streets. Turns and cross traffic show intersecting streets -- counting number of blocks from highways allows confirmation of location of all individual streets (alleys would add some confusion). Streets with curves in them allow further confirmation of locations along the street. Patterns of traffic pauses show STOP signs or traffic lights. Areas with only interpolated data hint at tree cover or tall buildings.
I'll stipulate to that.
Yes. Do the math. The entire human population of the Earth can fit in Texas, with several hundred square feet of empty space around each person. A lot more if you group families together.
"...a lot of the subway in Amsterdam is above ground"
...and all below sea level...
Yeah, the article just says "we read it, now we're going to put it in a museum". Aren't they going to copy it to CD-ROM in a known data format? Who will have access to this data?
Server Slashed by Doting Fans... URLs at 11.
No'pe, aint O'ptional.
Speak more clearly.
"A years" does not make sense.
You obviously meant to say "eight years", but you need to speak more clearly.
I tried, but when I pasted it into Netscape, everything showed as question marks and Slashdot rejected it due to too many letters being capitalized.
So will UFO be in tape or DVD? It may be difficult to find extra bits for bonus discs...
You've all seen a similar use. Listen to the approach of the lunar shuttle to the TMA-1 base in "2001: A Space Odyssey".
And fifteen years ago I was listening to network behavior: the RF leakage from a computer or network device can produces recognizable patterns on a radio. I identified excessive directory searches in an application from the background chatter. The higher speeds of current technology makes this more difficult with simple broadcast AM/FM radios.
I also believe that Slashdot discussed Peep, the Network Auralizer which plays sounds based on network activity. But Peep is oriented toward behavior of an entire network, not of specific connections.
Oh, you think I'm joking? There are copiers which are basically a scanner -- and they can make large numbers of copies very quickly by using several printers simultaneously.
(I don't know if that was actually a problem in this situation)
Don't forget that in the real world some train failures cause derailments which destroy the track which goes in the other direction.
Defensive design requires considering both probabilities and physical reality. Lightning is less likely to damage fiber than copper, but copper might be better in a very hot environment (not that I'd like to run the network of a steel mill). The chance of two identical Cisco networks failing is small, unless the failure involves behavior of Cisco equipment which even Cisco engineers can't change.
You need a RAID controller which can handle slightly different drives, and have at least one different drive in each row. Even better if you're using a configuration where two drives by different manufacturers have whole copies of the data, so failure of two drives is not fatal.
No. His notation is confusing, but is math is correct.
Their network staff should be looking at all solutions. They know better than we do what their bandwidth and connectivity problems are. I only hope they don't make the same mistakes on both networks.
(I forgot to point out that one of the reasons to have a dedicated staff is to avoid having the same design mistakes done to both networks. The staff of the second network should participate in all-network meetings which discuss status and problems, but not necessarily the problem-solving meetings. If the two network staff try to solve problems independently then design errors are less likely to be duplicated. The two groups should compare their solutions so they can teach each other and perhaps find even better solutions, be aware that one solution may be better for one set of equipment, and if two solutions are about equally good then each network use their own best solution.)
The ideal would be to actually use both networks, such as by using each on alternating weeks. This ensures that both networks can handle full normal operations and are both operational.
There are a couple of islands where accidents due to escaped mice will be avoided because they'll be eaten by the dinosaurs.