I am glad to see any M2 system developing. Since I habitually take the opposite side in many discussions, I see my comments get either pounded down or at least not promoted. When a comment sparks daughter comments perhaps it should automatically be raised. I think all moderaters should consider the difference between things they disagree with, and comments that don't contribute to the discussion.
What ping flood Pluto ? I've been trying for years to get a signal thru to Venus and now I find out NASA hasn't come up with the protocol yet. Arrggh !!!!
I think Suck is wrong on this one, for the most part. Most of the people who work on Linux will not be negatively affected by a little money. In fact it will allow many of them to contribute more time and effort.
X-ray astronomy specifically and astronomy in general is a perfect place for LINUX (and UNIX previously) to grow. First, it's pretty much a skill training sourcing field. That is, the number of job opportunities is such that there are a lot of good people who just can't work in the field after they reach qualification and find work elsewhere, like in the computer industry. Second, astronomy is not a luxuriously supported discipline (double the funding and thats still true.) hence, astronomers learn to do things on the cheap (like not buying an MS setup, getting an open source one.) Third, it's a moderate sized field, small enough to have lots of personal contacts, large enough to make technology specialization at least plausible. Fourth, the amount of computing power needed in certain disciplines , particularly X-ray, is pretty much . . . well, astronomical. Hence, the people in the discipline become pretty handy with computers and analysis. All in all, astronomical research provides one of the best returns on the federal dollar invested in academic research. Of course, don't tell the government this.
Security is theoretically an impossible task. Given enough time and enough access any code can be broken any hiding spot can be found. Practically, security is about building the cost up high enough that it becomes too expensive to crack. Hence the code talkers where too difficult (timewise) to crack for the benefits. Enigma, the German code system, remained valuable for a significant period of time, hence cracking it for each and every day, was economically viable. Even an STO system as proposed, i.e. switching in to full alert when a wrong pattern is tried, would be worth cracking if the value was high enough.
If you ever move this party to Chicago, then you could count on me to donate a couple of kegs of my prize-winning beer. A programmer who makes his own beer (I gotta get out way more often.)
I know, bad form to reply to self, but an example will clarify much.
Sorting sequential: buble sorting is fastest parallel: quickly examine the list and determine how mixed it is, apply a metric to determine number of processors to use optimally, break into optimal? number of lists and sequentially sort each, reissue a metric and redeploy processors for merging the lists, now sequentially check the main list When it works it is much faster, but the algorithm is several magnitudes more complex.
I think largely parallel processing would involve very different programming languages and more importantly very different ways of thinking about problem solving. The language I use has an inherent looping structure to it. Most languages have an inherent sequential nature to them. To efficently utilize parallel processing you don't do it that way. Even language processing is only partially adapated to parallel processing.
Why restrict anyone anymore ? The Clinton administration has basically handed our most advanced bomb technology to the Chinese and from there it can go to virtually any trouble making state in the world. Computing power is no longer the threat it once was. It's now only the atomic secrets that need to be protected (and has been sold out for a few million dollars which delivered the election.) Anyone for impeachment two ? No, thought not.
Like most Democrats, Sen Hollings thinks government knows better than the common citizen. Further, like all politicians, he's a control freak. "Can't control the web, then tax it." I, for one, still shop at my friendly old bookstore (and at Amazon.) There are reasons for both. The web is great it adds to my life. Adding taxation would diminish the experience.
A friend of mine in the military sent me a fax about judging world militaries by "how many trigger-pullers" they have per 10K enrolled members. Perhaps software companies should be judged in the same way, number of tech staff per 100 employees. This way hiring a PR company would count against you or more specifically, hiring too many PR companies would work against you. I'd start investing my 401K in this way if it could be published.
The Statute for Religous Freedom was a response to the Church of England, which was the state religon and had special taxes for supporting it, regardless of religous choice of the individual. When Thomas Jefferson was President Jefferson he exchanged correspondance with a group of Catholic nuns at a convent in New Orleans, a new US territory. Catholicism was traditionally supported by the French and the nuns were very concerned that their ability to operate a school would be comprimised. They had always depended upon tax breaks and donations from the public and had always received materials from the government. Jefferson promised to continue all of these, stated his support for their efforts at education and in order that the students might be better acquainted with the US, arranged that official histories of the States be forwarded to the convent's school. He also sent a private donation. Best not to take things out of context, lest you find you're revising history. Jefferson favored religion and abhorred your stance.
Mr Katz, I cant agree with you on this one. First off, I find two seperate issues that you are merging here. One, posting the ten commandments in schools is as watered down an attempt to get some religion into schools as will be permitted by the courts. And don't tell me about separation of church and state. I can prove that Thomas Jefferson openly supported religon in schools and government support of it. Original intent was that no religon be given preference or rammed down student's throats. Second, why should children be given things like South Park as their entertainment ? A nation that has deprived children of their childhood has taken a great step towards destroying it's greatest asset, it's people. For 'Eyes Wide Shut' and sex scenes this has been going on for a very long time. I saw a European version of a movie I was very familiar with in the States and was quite surprised by how much more sex was in it. Yes, I enjoyed it more, but I can understand how the American ratings system would cripple it. Fourteen or fifteen year olds should be doing things like sports or camping. They are still children, even if their bodies don't think so. Understanding human society or the technology that underlies it is a much better endeavour than being grossed out. Boys of that age will find out about sex, thats a given. I'm not arguing against sex education, just the marketing of trash like the South Park movie to people of that age. If you wanted to control access then force the parents to watch the movie in toto BEFORE they can give their children permission to see it. I know you can get it on the net, but until someone invents a total body sensor/stimulation system which is net compatible, a movie is the cheapest, most powerful stimulation available.
It won't do any good to bring the bird back if we don't also take out it's number one predator, opposums. Since it is a marsupial, hence very different from all desired animals in New Zealand, it should have a very different immune system. If we could develop three seperate viruses that would be very fatal to marsupials and release them all over New Zealand at once then the opposum population should plummet to a level where they cannot find mates locally and die off. Not that this would solve all of NZ's wildlife problems but it would help one heck of a lot. You'd probably have to remove all captive kangaroos and wallabys etc. first.
As for the delta-vee, why not just plop it down at L4 and it will stay put (as long as the moon is orbiting the Earth.) It's not the shifting of orbit, it's the deaccleration to get it to stay.
Gravitational affects of being in the inner solar system have much greater effect on changing the orbit. Since outgassing is affected nearly logarithmically by distance from the sun, they are much more concentrated at apihelion. If we can watch it leave the inner solar system we should have enough info to predict return within a day or less.
I previously sat on a library board and we solved the problem this way. When anyone under age 18 received a library card it was mandatory for their parent/guardian to fill out an internet responsibility statement. "Did the library have the right to terminate the child's usage of the computer for viewing pornographic material ? If not then the parent had the responsibility of supervising the child's surfing." Large print signs were posted to the effect that one complaint about pornographic material was enough to invoke the library's right to decide what was pornographic and what was not. No complaints, no interference. We also kept a list of sites which previously had been found pornographic (not posted but in a binder.) I did see a few people using that binder to explore new sites, and others off-hours surfing but because the policies were clearly posted and immediately enforced, after one year of this system we had only one complaint (from the head of the local ACLU.) Librarians would never permit 'tailing' someone using a public computer. What patrons read is completely their business. A librarian can monitor it only to the point of guarenteeing everyone else's right to read it as well. No explicit censorship by the librarian is good. Implicit censorship, such as whether to buy a copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover or not is permitted, which is where we took our policy from.
In a previous lifetime I did some preliminary research on 'living computers'. Turns out the ethical issues are pretty small but the two issues that really have to be solved are: 1) connectivity (if it can't talk to current computers it's not going to be developed) 2) architecture (take it massively parallel and it dwarfs current computing capacity, otherwise forget it.) Neurons don't actually link up well to current computers. They are perfect for massive parallelism however. Can we figure out how to utilize that and then can we figure out how to wire it up ?
If you did q-mech and gen rel then you are definately a problem solver. I personally dropped my physics pursuits after one year of space plasma physics and encoutering classmates who did hamiltonians in their head. It took me several more years (a busted minor league baseball career in Japan) two marriages to former models and an advanced degree or two, to realize where I could fit in in the the geek community. I've held elective office in a town of 100,000 and speak four foreign languages. I'm neither pasty-faced nor socially-awkward. And yet, I consider myself a 'geek' and a happily adjusted one. The programmers community I work in has the three types of 'geeks' that I outlined primarily. Categories are only meant to be helpful guidelines, not boxes. If I've offended I apologize. More and more 'peoplers' are appearing as the field broadens. I think it's a great phenomenon. We're not locked into one IT department anymore.
All geeks got into computers because of two seperate drives: a need to solve problems and a social need to value logic above personal factors. Thus social skills are not a top priority. Managing geeks requires recognizing the three seperate types of geeks. 'Workers', 'Peoplers' and "Silverbacks'. Every programming community has their own of each. Populations differ by system characteristics.
'Silverbacks' are the rarest. They have worked in computers forever. Geek managers trust them to solve the hardest problems. They absolutely need to feel indispensible and adored, but only geeks should interact with them. Don't even think of moving them into management. Treat their cubicles as the holiest of holies. They are however, the perfect compliment to 'Peoplers' geeks, who should bounce their ideas off of a silverback before commiting resources to them. Don't bother getting silverbacks any training. 'Workers' form the majority of all geek populations. Given a standard toolbox they can solve standard problems. They respond somewhat to cross-training. Occasional training is apreciated. They really should only meet with, be promoted over, or be responsible to fellow geeks. Programming teams are their forte. 'Peoplers' are the only safe geeks to interact with non-geek employees. They need to be in the loop. They actually thrive on being liasons. Often they are not the best programmers. They should be plugged into programming teams on different projects. Their own projects should be small, low-priority and permitted to fail. This keeps them in the geek world. 'Peoplers' can definately become overloaded so they need their programming time and a safe haven. Training has the greatest benefit to these geeks. These people are absolutely essential to the smooth functioning of your company. Don't promote these people into geek manager functions, but treasure them in other ways. But keep them geeks.
The OS battleground is shifting back to education, which is where it should be. UNIX became so popular because almost every university I knew of found it more practical than the competition. M$ made small inroads but never really gave universities what they wanted, but businesses said 'we dont care' and M$ acquired that dollar sign. Now, Linux is restoring the advantages and education, where one can get an apprenticeship, is supplying the training.
I'm not saying this is the best scenario or criticizing either. I'm just commenting here. The system does seem to work better than M$'s alternative.
With Clinton, thats the only thing he is capable of. Bush has a high-tech savy that Gore can only dream of. For example, there was a project at Argonne National labs which did two things 1) design a nuclear reactor to burn the long term radioactive waste materials into short term radioactive stuff and 2) a truly safe nuclear reactor (kill everyone there, screw everything up and it shuts down.) What did Gore do ? He immediately closed both down completely. If thats a high tech problem solver then I'm the Queen of England.
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I am glad to see any M2 system developing. Since I habitually take the opposite side in many discussions, I see my comments get either pounded down or at least not promoted. When a comment sparks daughter comments perhaps it should automatically be raised. I think all moderaters should consider the difference between things they disagree with, and comments that don't contribute to the discussion.
Sounds great !!!! Where do I sign on (you only need 1,999,999 more dollars.)
What ping flood Pluto ? I've been trying for years to get a signal thru to Venus and now I find out NASA hasn't come up with the protocol yet. Arrggh !!!!
I think Suck is wrong on this one, for the most part. Most of the people who work on Linux will not be negatively affected by a little money. In fact it will allow many of them to contribute more time and effort.
X-ray astronomy specifically and astronomy in general is a perfect place for LINUX (and UNIX previously) to grow. First, it's pretty much a skill training sourcing field. That is, the number of job opportunities is such that there are a lot of good people who just can't work in the field after they reach qualification and find work elsewhere, like in the computer industry. Second, astronomy is not a luxuriously supported discipline (double the funding and thats still true.) hence, astronomers learn to do things on the cheap (like not buying an MS setup, getting an open source one.) Third, it's a moderate sized field, small enough to have lots of personal contacts, large enough to make technology specialization at least plausible. Fourth, the amount of computing power needed in certain disciplines , particularly X-ray, is pretty much . . . well, astronomical. Hence, the people in the discipline become pretty handy with computers and analysis. All in all, astronomical research provides one of the best returns on the federal dollar invested in academic research. Of course, don't tell the government this.
Security is theoretically an impossible task. Given enough time and enough access any code can be broken any hiding spot can be found. Practically, security is about building the cost up high enough that it becomes too expensive to crack. Hence the code talkers where too difficult (timewise) to crack for the benefits. Enigma, the German code system, remained valuable for a significant period of time, hence cracking it for each and every day, was economically viable. Even an STO system as proposed, i.e. switching in to full alert when a wrong pattern is tried, would be worth cracking if the value was high enough.
If you ever move this party to Chicago, then you could count on me to donate a couple of kegs of my prize-winning beer. A programmer who makes his own beer (I gotta get out way more often.)
I know, bad form to reply to self, but an example will clarify much.
Sorting
sequential: buble sorting is fastest
parallel: quickly examine the list and determine how mixed it is, apply a metric to determine number of processors to use optimally, break into optimal? number of lists and sequentially sort each, reissue a metric and redeploy processors for merging the lists, now sequentially check the main list
When it works it is much faster, but the algorithm is several magnitudes more complex.
I think largely parallel processing would involve very different programming languages and more importantly very different ways of thinking about problem solving. The language I use has an inherent looping structure to it. Most languages have an inherent sequential nature to them. To efficently utilize parallel processing you don't do it that way. Even language processing is only partially adapated to parallel processing.
Why restrict anyone anymore ? The Clinton administration has basically handed our most advanced bomb technology to the Chinese and from there it can go to virtually any trouble making state in the world. Computing power is no longer the threat it once was. It's now only the atomic secrets that need to be protected (and has been sold out for a few million dollars which delivered the election.) Anyone for impeachment two ? No, thought not.
Like most Democrats, Sen Hollings thinks government knows better than the common citizen. Further, like all politicians, he's a control freak. "Can't control the web, then tax it."
I, for one, still shop at my friendly old bookstore (and at Amazon.) There are reasons for both.
The web is great it adds to my life. Adding taxation would diminish the experience.
A friend of mine in the military sent me a fax about judging world militaries by "how many trigger-pullers" they have per 10K enrolled members. Perhaps software companies should be judged in the same way, number of tech staff per 100 employees. This way hiring a PR company would count against you or more specifically, hiring too many PR companies would work against you. I'd start investing my 401K in this way if it could be published.
The Statute for Religous Freedom was a response to the Church of England, which was the state religon and had special taxes for supporting it, regardless of religous choice of the individual. When Thomas Jefferson was President Jefferson he exchanged correspondance with a group of Catholic nuns at a convent in New Orleans, a new US territory. Catholicism was traditionally supported by the French and the nuns were very concerned that their ability to operate a school would be comprimised. They had always depended upon tax breaks and donations from the public and had always received materials from the government. Jefferson promised to continue all of these, stated his support for their efforts at education and in order that the students might be better acquainted with the US, arranged that official histories of the States be forwarded to the convent's school. He also sent a private donation.
Best not to take things out of context, lest you find you're revising history. Jefferson favored religion and abhorred your stance.
Mr Katz,
I cant agree with you on this one. First off, I find two seperate issues that you are merging here. One, posting the ten commandments in schools is as watered down an attempt to get some religion into schools as will be permitted by the courts. And don't tell me about separation of church and state. I can prove that Thomas Jefferson openly supported religon in schools and government support of it. Original intent was that no religon be given preference or rammed down student's throats.
Second, why should children be given things like South Park as their entertainment ? A nation that has deprived children of their childhood has taken a great step towards destroying it's greatest asset, it's people.
For 'Eyes Wide Shut' and sex scenes this has been going on for a very long time. I saw a European version of a movie I was very familiar with in the States and was quite surprised by how much more sex was in it. Yes, I enjoyed it more, but I can understand how the American ratings system would cripple it.
Fourteen or fifteen year olds should be doing things like sports or camping. They are still children, even if their bodies don't think so. Understanding human society or the technology that underlies it is a much better endeavour than being grossed out. Boys of that age will find out about sex, thats a given. I'm not arguing against sex education, just the marketing of trash like the South Park movie to people of that age.
If you wanted to control access then force the parents to watch the movie in toto BEFORE they can give their children permission to see it. I know you can get it on the net, but until someone invents a total body sensor/stimulation system which is net compatible, a movie is the cheapest, most powerful stimulation available.
It won't do any good to bring the bird back if we don't also take out it's number one predator, opposums. Since it is a marsupial, hence very different from all desired animals in New Zealand, it should have a very different immune system. If we could develop three seperate viruses that would be very fatal to marsupials and release them all over New Zealand at once then the opposum population should plummet to a level where they cannot find mates locally and die off. Not that this would solve all of NZ's wildlife problems but it would help one heck of a lot. You'd probably have to remove all captive kangaroos and wallabys etc. first.
As for the delta-vee, why not just plop it down at L4 and it will stay put (as long as the moon is orbiting the Earth.) It's not the shifting of orbit, it's the deaccleration to get it to stay.
Gravitational affects of being in the inner solar system have much greater effect on changing the orbit. Since outgassing is affected nearly logarithmically by distance from the sun, they are much more concentrated at apihelion. If we can watch it leave the inner solar system we should have enough info to predict return within a day or less.
I previously sat on a library board and we solved the problem this way. When anyone under age 18 received a library card it was mandatory for their parent/guardian to fill out an internet responsibility statement. "Did the library have the right to terminate the child's usage of the computer for viewing pornographic material ? If not then the parent had the responsibility of supervising the child's surfing." Large print signs were posted to the effect that one complaint about pornographic material was enough to invoke the library's right to decide what was pornographic and what was not. No complaints, no interference. We also kept a list of sites which previously had been found pornographic (not posted but in a binder.) I did see a few people using that binder to explore new sites, and others off-hours surfing but because the policies were clearly posted and immediately enforced, after one year of this system we had only one complaint (from the head of the local ACLU.)
Librarians would never permit 'tailing' someone using a public computer. What patrons read is completely their business. A librarian can monitor it only to the point of guarenteeing everyone else's right to read it as well. No explicit censorship by the librarian is good. Implicit censorship, such as whether to buy a copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover or not is permitted, which is where we took our policy from.
In a previous lifetime I did some preliminary research on 'living computers'. Turns out the ethical issues are pretty small but the two issues that really have to be solved are: 1) connectivity (if it can't talk to current computers it's not going to be developed) 2) architecture (take it massively parallel and it dwarfs current computing capacity, otherwise forget it.)
Neurons don't actually link up well to current computers. They are perfect for massive parallelism however. Can we figure out how to utilize that and then can we figure out how to wire it up ?
If you did q-mech and gen rel then you are definately a problem solver. I personally dropped my physics pursuits after one year of space plasma physics and encoutering classmates who did hamiltonians in their head.
It took me several more years (a busted minor league baseball career in Japan) two marriages to former models and an advanced degree or two, to realize where I could fit in in the the geek community. I've held elective office in a town of 100,000 and speak four foreign languages. I'm neither pasty-faced nor socially-awkward.
And yet, I consider myself a 'geek' and a happily adjusted one. The programmers community I work in has the three types of 'geeks' that I outlined primarily. Categories are only meant to be helpful guidelines, not boxes. If I've offended I apologize. More and more 'peoplers' are appearing as the field broadens. I think it's a great phenomenon. We're not locked into one IT department anymore.
All geeks got into computers because of two seperate drives: a need to solve problems and a social need to value logic above personal factors. Thus social skills are not a top priority. Managing geeks requires recognizing the three seperate types of geeks. 'Workers', 'Peoplers' and "Silverbacks'. Every programming community has their own of each. Populations differ by system characteristics.
'Silverbacks' are the rarest. They have worked in computers forever. Geek managers trust them to solve the hardest problems. They absolutely need to feel indispensible and adored, but only geeks should interact with them. Don't even think of moving them into management. Treat their cubicles as the holiest of holies. They are however, the perfect compliment to 'Peoplers' geeks, who should bounce their ideas off of a silverback before commiting resources to them. Don't bother getting silverbacks any training.
'Workers' form the majority of all geek populations. Given a standard toolbox they can solve standard problems. They respond somewhat to cross-training. Occasional training is apreciated. They really should only meet with, be promoted over, or be responsible to fellow geeks. Programming teams are their forte.
'Peoplers' are the only safe geeks to interact with non-geek employees. They need to be in the loop. They actually thrive on being liasons. Often they are not the best programmers. They should be plugged into programming teams on different projects. Their own projects should be small, low-priority and permitted to fail. This keeps them in the geek world. 'Peoplers' can definately become overloaded so they need their programming time and a safe haven. Training has the greatest benefit to these geeks. These people are absolutely essential to the smooth functioning of your company. Don't promote these people into geek manager functions, but treasure them in other ways. But keep them geeks.
The OS battleground is shifting back to education, which is where it should be. UNIX became so popular because almost every university I knew of found it more practical than the competition. M$ made small inroads but never really gave universities what they wanted, but businesses said 'we dont care' and M$ acquired that dollar sign. Now, Linux is restoring the advantages and education, where one can get an apprenticeship, is supplying the training.
I'm not saying this is the best scenario or criticizing either. I'm just commenting here. The system does seem to work better than M$'s alternative.
With Clinton, thats the only thing he is capable of. Bush has a high-tech savy that Gore can only dream of. For example, there was a project at Argonne National labs which did two things 1) design a nuclear reactor to burn the long term radioactive waste materials into short term radioactive stuff and 2) a truly safe nuclear reactor (kill everyone there, screw everything up and it shuts down.)
What did Gore do ? He immediately closed both down completely. If thats a high tech problem solver then I'm the Queen of England.