Our groups (MVPs) has done a lot of chatting about the variable results and performance in SETI processing.
While we haven't done anything nearly as scientifically viable as this study, our conclusion has been that the difference in processing speed between a 1Ghz and 866Mhz Intel processors (each with 128M RAM) is very slight - almost imperceptible in some cases.
Systems with larger L2 caches, however, seemed to have distinct performance advantages. How (or if) you can apply that information to non-SETI applications I will leave to you.
I agree with remote monitoring of kids up to a point. I think there's value in it for the parents to be able to see their kids at the pre-school and maybe kindergarten level. At some point, though, I think they outgrow that and the value of it is lost in the "creepiness" of it.
Let mom and dad watch little Johnny at nap time while he's still so cute. Once he's old enough to pack his own backpack for school though, leave the cameras out of the classroom.
-Coach-
An occasionally useful trick for dealing with spam
on
RFC for Spammers
·
· Score: 3
Like most people I've been getting bombarded with the usual "Interest Rates Dropped!" and "Collect Cash Judgements!" spam that comes with faked return addresses so you can't reply.
One thing I noticed, however, was that they listed a phone number to call them at. A quick web search for that phone number turned up the home page for the company behind the spam...including...
...a legitimate e-mail address to contact them at. I e-mailed them, asking politely to be removed from their list. They responded, contritely, that they will do so. As they were pretty clearly busted I am somewhat optimistic that they'll remove me.
If they don't I know have TWO legitimate e-mail addresses at their company and I can easily rig my system to automatically bounce 50 copies of every spam I get from them right back at those addresses.
I'd (almost) hate to do that, but it may be the only way to really get their attention.
Most major word processors include version control, comments, revision history and so forth. A major issue facing law firms these days is making sure that all of that content is removed/turned off before submitting electronic documents to the other side.
It can be very embarrassing to have all of the private comments revealed to the other party when you didn't realize there were there. Increasingly firms are checking for these things as well.
Word 2002, from the Office XP suite, includes a Security Tab on the Options settings. In there you'll find a Privacy section which gives you checkboxes for things like deleting personal information on save and "Warn before sending, saving or printing" a document that has file revision tracking turned on.
I certainly agree that much of the open source software is technically competitive; though it could be argued that some of the technical development in the commercial software is the interface that makes it usable by a 50yo secretary whose skills come entirely from her For Dummies book. That aside I frequently marvel at how good open source software is from a technical standpoint.
One point that I think is important, though, is the barrier to entry. Anybody with a desktop computer can start creating software. How good the software will be depends upon the tools used and the skills of the person doing the creating. A lot of great software has been created by people with an abundance of pizza and a lot of late nights of bumming code.
In this context, though, we're talking about biology and genomes -- I just don't think we're going to see a lot of guys chugging Pepsi and crunching molecular genetics all night.:) Of course, I could be wrong.
Another big difference between software and genetics is that of gratification. When you create a great piece of software (or even improve an existing piece) you can see it run right away. Give copies to your friends. Post it on your website. I'm not clear that you'll see the same, immediate, tangible results from synthesizing DNA which may take some of the excitement out of such a project for the average hacker.
Anybody can scoop a rock out of the mud. It takes a few more skills and tools to make a hand grenade.:)
There seem to be a few problems that haven't been solved yet.
1. The aforementioned how to lift the cable.
2. Maintenance issues - what happens if the cable happens to break. Making and installing a new cable in the existing structure would probably be extraordinarily expensive. Seems like it would be time consuming at best to do any routine maintance on the elevator shaft.
3. How mad do you get at somebody whose kid presses all of the buttons on your way to the 213,117,876th floor?
4. As you get higher, the force of gravity will be less. Somehow you have to balance the g-forces of the speed of ascent with the steadily decreasing gravitational pull so that your passengers are neither squashed against the floor or floating around the ceiling.
5. You can't just use a cable to manipulate this car. When the car is at the top, there won't be enough gravity force to pull the car down (as conventional elevators have). You'll need to give it a push towards earth...then use the cable to keep the speed of the fall under control.
6. Nobody's ever constructed a structure inside the atmosphere at the kinds of altitudes we're talking about. There are all kinds of challeges to just existing at 40,000 feet much less trying to build a massive tower.
7. The stress on that structure at an altitude of 40,000 feet. As the earth spins, only the base of the tower is attached to earth, the rest of the tower has to withstand the torque that is applied by that.
Just some random thoughts. Some may have easy answers, some don't.
That's a very well considered position but I have to disagree with one statement:
One of the reasons open-source software is so competitive with products backed by tens of millions of dollars of R&D budgets...
I'm not seeing many Linux workstations in corporate America. Not on the desks of the average worker, anyhow. Neither the lady at my bank, my accountant or my attorney is using Linux or an open-source software suite. There are a lot of different reasons for that, not the least of which being what we call "network effects", but the end result is that open-source software is only really competitive with big budget products in the server rooms and among/.ers.
Among those whose IQ is merely normal Linux is difficult to pronounce and even harder to install.
While I am a great admirer of the idea of allowing as many people as possible to brainstorm solutions and improve products I also recognize that there are some problems that are going to require some budget to solve. Especially in the area of bio-tech there is going to need to be some capital investment and most capital investment requires a return on that investment.
To some degree obtaining a return on the investment requires some nature of ownership -- we've already seen that you can't count on the stock price sustaining you endlessly if you aren't actually making any profit.
There is no doubt in my mind that there are many brilliant people who could significantly advance the research being done if they had the information to work with. However, while innovation certainly is about more than money, some innovation also requires a great deal of money. The scientists may be personally poor, but many of them have considerable budgets to support their work.
A couple of years ago they recalled a bunch of chargers - same reason if I recall correctly, inordinate risk of fire. Anyhow, we had a dozen or so Dell notebooks and contacted them for the replacement chargers. A week later we got a box of new chargers - one for each machine. Very nice.
A week after that we got another box of new chargers. Now we had 2 for each machine. Odd.
A couple of weeks later we got another box of new chargers. Now we had way too many chargers and we were starting to try and figure out alternate uses for them. Too light for wheel chocks, too much cord for paperweights, not strong enough for rappelling.
How many hours you bill and how many hours you work may not always be the same thing, of course.:)
I've been a consultant for a number of years and worked quite a bit with attorneys. Billable hours are a pretty important part of both professions. Ironically, speaking of attorneys, bringing in technology and processes to make the attorney more efficient is often antithetical to their profits -- if they bill fewer hours they make less money! Naturally the trick is to use that improved efficiency to get more clients *OR* to start using flat-rate billing. Not all of them see it that way, though.
All of that aside I think it's tough to measure exactly how many hours are spent working - salaried employees tend not to keep close track and hourly employees may artificially inflate their hours for obvious gain.
As a salaried employee myself I don't count my hours - but I often find myself thinking through work problems during my drive home or at the grocery store. I frequently read work-related materials or do work-related research at home.
The flip side of that is that here I am at work, reading and posting to/. Is that part of my job? It could be argued that it is, but I'm not sure my employer would agree. I'm quite sure my daily browse of MSNBC is not part of my job description so I'm not really always working, when I'm at work.
Perhaps we've simply blurred the lines between work and off-work? We work more away from the job -- with our VPNs, cable modems, cell phones, etc. -- and do less work at the job (with ubiquitous Internet access and other distractions).
"The best education is that a child should play amongst beautiful things."
To some degree that's true of IT workers as well. Many of the best advances in technology have been made by hackers who just enjoyed late nights banging away at stuff in a very unstructured manner.
Of course, there's a time and place for it -- you can't have playtime at the expense of doing regular backups, or necessary system maintance. However, I'm a firm believer in hiring people who are excited about technology and who WANT to spend their lunch hours and quiet time playing with stuff, looking up crazy programming techniques and debating the best way to bum 3 more lines out of some routine we have.
I think the determinent factor here is that there doesn't seem to have been much evidence that the rumors were false, that they were deliberately misleading or that there was a conspiracy.
If there was clear evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the chat roomers then I would support discovering their identities. Under the circumstances I think the judge made the right call.
Just because somebody says something you don't like doesn't mean they lose their right to anonymity.
i think it's more of a money issue than adding special effects. jesus, i mean how long does it take to re-add all the out-takes, maybe add an already produced documentary, and engineer for DVD?
[AOL]I agree. [/AOL]
I'm skeptical of the explanation that the delay is because of adding content. I think it's all about money.
...we all know exactly what kind of websites do that, don't we?:)now
Sure:
IWON.COM: play their Pick 7 game and submit your entries. You'll have to do that by clicking an ad banner - usually for a casino site. Invariably that site pops up at least one extra browser window (in addition to the main site) asking for my e-mail address, inviting me to play various games or what not. Every now and then when I click something from my links bar to go to a different site, the Casino site throws more browser windows at me that I have to close before I can get to where I wanted.
MSNBC occasionally pops up an additional browser window offering to play a video or asking for my zip code so it can offer me the local weather or whatnot. Naturally this is also accompanied, or prefaced, with an ad.
Classmates.com: Half the time I go there it launches an extra window with a "Survey" for me to take.
Various computer vendors sites (HP.COM comes to mind, but I could be misremembering) like to pop up random survey boxes at odd times.
I don't mind the surveys too much; they're usually easy to close. The ads are what end up being persistent.
Which kinds of sites were you thinking of?;-)
I guess the real problem I see is that when I "surf" I want to go where I want to go and I don't appreciate sites that try to take me places I didn't ask to go. If I want to see the video, I'll click the link for it. Ditto for the survey. Please don't mess with my browser environment by popping additional browser windows onto my screen without asking me first.
While I'm complaining...I also don't care for sites that play music or sound effects and don't give you a way to turn it off. I usually listen to CNN or NPR via Internet radio while I work and it's annoying to hit a site that insists upon loudly playing the national anthem or the South Park theme soung over what I'm trying to listen to. The music is cute -- provide an easy to find link that lets us turn it off if we don't want to hear it.
...with all that time on your hands; since you don't watch TV or listen to the radio. Wish I were as disciplined; my yard would be mowed more frequently.
Advertising is a long-established science that is also largely art. Just because you advertise something doesn't meant that millions will immediately clamor for your product, however.
People buy things. Food, cars, clothes, etc. The question becomes which food, which clothes, which beer, are they going to buy. The answer to that is varied - Price, image, taste, paste experience, all affect the choice. Advertising is how the company tries to influence the way you view their product - which (they hope) gets you to choose their product when it's time to buy it.
It's all about image. It's far too big a subject to try and break down into a single/. post, but I assure you that advertising does work. Every ad doesn't work on every person, but it works.
I can appreciate your position, but how do you propose the programming gets created and delivered if not for advertising (and occasionally subscription) revenues? Information may want to be free, but it still costs money to produce, broadcast & print those radio, television and magazine programs.
While I agree that banner ads seem a weak solution - I practically never click through - interruption-based ads are maddening.
Part of the problem with the 20-second commercial idea is that it assumes that web surfers come for a single prolonged reading session. Maybe some do, but I typically click to a news site, scan the headlines, read an article or two, then go elsewhere. I come back a few hours later to see what's new and I pop in and out a couple of times a day to look up some information or catch up on a story somebody told me about. There's no way I'm going to sit through a 20-second commercial 5-6 times a day.
The model that's even more maddening to me are sites that spawn additional browsers without asking me. I hate clicking to a site only to have 3 more browser windows pop up with surveys and videos and ads -- even worse when you're trying to leave the site to have multiple, persistent, ads flung at you without recourse. This kind of browser-jacking is a fast way to get on my list of sites I'll never come back to.
So what's the solution? I wouldn't mind a full-screen ad that I can click past (i.e. don't have to wait the 20 seconds). The main reason I don't click on banner ads isn't because they're annoying but rather because they almost never advertise anything there that interests me. Cheap long-distance and on-line casinos are most of what I see; no thanks.
Make the ads relevent, let the users click past them with a minimum of hassle/inconvenience and make the site behind the ad useful and efficient (for those who do click through). Then you'll find success.
Actually this platform could be the building block for hypersonic people transports. How about regular flights from L.A. to New York that take about 30 minutes? L.A. to Tokyo in two hours? There are some exciting possibilities for terrestrial travel, as well as space travel.
-Coach-
A good thought, but unnecessary and impractical...
on
X-43 Scramjet Rollout
·
· Score: 1
The natural desire for maximum data is a good one, but in this case I don't think there'd be much to learn.
1)This isn't the same vehicle the engine will eventually be used in. If the fuselage of this test platform cracks that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about effects on the production aircraft.
2)The vehicle is going to get very hot and hit the cold water very hard. It may be difficult to tell, from whatever shards are left, what damage was suffered in flight and what was caused by the abrupt stop at the end of it.
It's an unmanned, "proof of concept" vehicle. Where would you prefer they bring it down?
It would be extraordinarily expensive and would take a lot of time to redesign this vehicle so that it could land. Since the purpose of this particular flight is to establish that the revolutionary engine works at all, such measures would be an unnecessary cost and delay.
Once they can confirm that the engine works, they can work on building that engine into a vehicle that has a controlled return.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't there a delightful irony in the statement that the "Immortality Device Inc" is a corporation...just in case he dies?
If his product works...oh, never mind.
-Coach-
While we haven't done anything nearly as scientifically viable as this study, our conclusion has been that the difference in processing speed between a 1Ghz and 866Mhz Intel processors (each with 128M RAM) is very slight - almost imperceptible in some cases.
Systems with larger L2 caches, however, seemed to have distinct performance advantages. How (or if) you can apply that information to non-SETI applications I will leave to you.
-Coach-
Let mom and dad watch little Johnny at nap time while he's still so cute. Once he's old enough to pack his own backpack for school though, leave the cameras out of the classroom.
-Coach-
One thing I noticed, however, was that they listed a phone number to call them at. A quick web search for that phone number turned up the home page for the company behind the spam...including...
...a legitimate e-mail address to contact them at. I e-mailed them, asking politely to be removed from their list. They responded, contritely, that they will do so. As they were pretty clearly busted I am somewhat optimistic that they'll remove me.
If they don't I know have TWO legitimate e-mail addresses at their company and I can easily rig my system to automatically bounce 50 copies of every spam I get from them right back at those addresses.
I'd (almost) hate to do that, but it may be the only way to really get their attention.
Coach
Gates can't swim!!!
-Coach-
Hard to imagine you'd have IE configured wrong somehow; are you maybe running the IE6 preview?
-Coach-
It can be very embarrassing to have all of the private comments revealed to the other party when you didn't realize there were there. Increasingly firms are checking for these things as well.
Word 2002, from the Office XP suite, includes a Security Tab on the Options settings. In there you'll find a Privacy section which gives you checkboxes for things like deleting personal information on save and "Warn before sending, saving or printing" a document that has file revision tracking turned on.
-Coach-
Maybe $15,000 for spammers located in jurisdictions that don't recognize U.S. law.
It's about time we start seriously punishing people who don't let us find them or who we can't legally touch.
-Coach-
(When is somebody going to tell Congress that the Internet extends beyond American borders?)
One point that I think is important, though, is the barrier to entry. Anybody with a desktop computer can start creating software. How good the software will be depends upon the tools used and the skills of the person doing the creating. A lot of great software has been created by people with an abundance of pizza and a lot of late nights of bumming code.
In this context, though, we're talking about biology and genomes -- I just don't think we're going to see a lot of guys chugging Pepsi and crunching molecular genetics all night. :) Of course, I could be wrong.
Another big difference between software and genetics is that of gratification. When you create a great piece of software (or even improve an existing piece) you can see it run right away. Give copies to your friends. Post it on your website. I'm not clear that you'll see the same, immediate, tangible results from synthesizing DNA which may take some of the excitement out of such a project for the average hacker.
Anybody can scoop a rock out of the mud. It takes a few more skills and tools to make a hand grenade. :)
-Coach-
1. The aforementioned how to lift the cable.
2. Maintenance issues - what happens if the cable happens to break. Making and installing a new cable in the existing structure would probably be extraordinarily expensive. Seems like it would be time consuming at best to do any routine maintance on the elevator shaft.
3. How mad do you get at somebody whose kid presses all of the buttons on your way to the 213,117,876th floor?
4. As you get higher, the force of gravity will be less. Somehow you have to balance the g-forces of the speed of ascent with the steadily decreasing gravitational pull so that your passengers are neither squashed against the floor or floating around the ceiling.
5. You can't just use a cable to manipulate this car. When the car is at the top, there won't be enough gravity force to pull the car down (as conventional elevators have). You'll need to give it a push towards earth...then use the cable to keep the speed of the fall under control.
6. Nobody's ever constructed a structure inside the atmosphere at the kinds of altitudes we're talking about. There are all kinds of challeges to just existing at 40,000 feet much less trying to build a massive tower.
7. The stress on that structure at an altitude of 40,000 feet. As the earth spins, only the base of the tower is attached to earth, the rest of the tower has to withstand the torque that is applied by that.
Just some random thoughts. Some may have easy answers, some don't.
-Coach-
One of the reasons open-source software is so competitive with products backed by tens of millions of dollars of R&D budgets...
I'm not seeing many Linux workstations in corporate America. Not on the desks of the average worker, anyhow. Neither the lady at my bank, my accountant or my attorney is using Linux or an open-source software suite. There are a lot of different reasons for that, not the least of which being what we call "network effects", but the end result is that open-source software is only really competitive with big budget products in the server rooms and among /.ers.
Among those whose IQ is merely normal Linux is difficult to pronounce and even harder to install.
While I am a great admirer of the idea of allowing as many people as possible to brainstorm solutions and improve products I also recognize that there are some problems that are going to require some budget to solve. Especially in the area of bio-tech there is going to need to be some capital investment and most capital investment requires a return on that investment.
To some degree obtaining a return on the investment requires some nature of ownership -- we've already seen that you can't count on the stock price sustaining you endlessly if you aren't actually making any profit.
There is no doubt in my mind that there are many brilliant people who could significantly advance the research being done if they had the information to work with. However, while innovation certainly is about more than money, some innovation also requires a great deal of money. The scientists may be personally poor, but many of them have considerable budgets to support their work.
-Coach-
A week after that we got another box of new chargers. Now we had 2 for each machine. Odd.
A couple of weeks later we got another box of new chargers. Now we had way too many chargers and we were starting to try and figure out alternate uses for them. Too light for wheel chocks, too much cord for paperweights, not strong enough for rappelling.
Anybody need Dell chargers? Cheap.
-Coach-
I've been a consultant for a number of years and worked quite a bit with attorneys. Billable hours are a pretty important part of both professions. Ironically, speaking of attorneys, bringing in technology and processes to make the attorney more efficient is often antithetical to their profits -- if they bill fewer hours they make less money! Naturally the trick is to use that improved efficiency to get more clients *OR* to start using flat-rate billing. Not all of them see it that way, though.
All of that aside I think it's tough to measure exactly how many hours are spent working - salaried employees tend not to keep close track and hourly employees may artificially inflate their hours for obvious gain.
As a salaried employee myself I don't count my hours - but I often find myself thinking through work problems during my drive home or at the grocery store. I frequently read work-related materials or do work-related research at home.
The flip side of that is that here I am at work, reading and posting to /. Is that part of my job? It could be argued that it is, but I'm not sure my employer would agree. I'm quite sure my daily browse of MSNBC is not part of my job description so I'm not really always working, when I'm at work.
Perhaps we've simply blurred the lines between work and off-work? We work more away from the job -- with our VPNs, cable modems, cell phones, etc. -- and do less work at the job (with ubiquitous Internet access and other distractions).
Just some random thoughts.
-Coach-
To some degree that's true of IT workers as well. Many of the best advances in technology have been made by hackers who just enjoyed late nights banging away at stuff in a very unstructured manner.
Of course, there's a time and place for it -- you can't have playtime at the expense of doing regular backups, or necessary system maintance. However, I'm a firm believer in hiring people who are excited about technology and who WANT to spend their lunch hours and quiet time playing with stuff, looking up crazy programming techniques and debating the best way to bum 3 more lines out of some routine we have.
-Coach-
If there was clear evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the chat roomers then I would support discovering their identities. Under the circumstances I think the judge made the right call.
Just because somebody says something you don't like doesn't mean they lose their right to anonymity.
-Coach-
[AOL]I agree. [/AOL]
I'm skeptical of the explanation that the delay is because of adding content. I think it's all about money.
-Coach-
Sure:
I don't mind the surveys too much; they're usually easy to close. The ads are what end up being persistent.
Which kinds of sites were you thinking of? ;-)
I guess the real problem I see is that when I "surf" I want to go where I want to go and I don't appreciate sites that try to take me places I didn't ask to go. If I want to see the video, I'll click the link for it. Ditto for the survey. Please don't mess with my browser environment by popping additional browser windows onto my screen without asking me first.
While I'm complaining...I also don't care for sites that play music or sound effects and don't give you a way to turn it off. I usually listen to CNN or NPR via Internet radio while I work and it's annoying to hit a site that insists upon loudly playing the national anthem or the South Park theme soung over what I'm trying to listen to. The music is cute -- provide an easy to find link that lets us turn it off if we don't want to hear it.
[/complaining]
-Coach-
-Coach-
People buy things. Food, cars, clothes, etc. The question becomes which food, which clothes, which beer, are they going to buy. The answer to that is varied - Price, image, taste, paste experience, all affect the choice. Advertising is how the company tries to influence the way you view their product - which (they hope) gets you to choose their product when it's time to buy it.
It's all about image. It's far too big a subject to try and break down into a single /. post, but I assure you that advertising does work. Every ad doesn't work on every person, but it works.
-Coach-
-Coach-
-Coach-
Part of the problem with the 20-second commercial idea is that it assumes that web surfers come for a single prolonged reading session. Maybe some do, but I typically click to a news site, scan the headlines, read an article or two, then go elsewhere. I come back a few hours later to see what's new and I pop in and out a couple of times a day to look up some information or catch up on a story somebody told me about. There's no way I'm going to sit through a 20-second commercial 5-6 times a day.
The model that's even more maddening to me are sites that spawn additional browsers without asking me. I hate clicking to a site only to have 3 more browser windows pop up with surveys and videos and ads -- even worse when you're trying to leave the site to have multiple, persistent, ads flung at you without recourse. This kind of browser-jacking is a fast way to get on my list of sites I'll never come back to.
So what's the solution? I wouldn't mind a full-screen ad that I can click past (i.e. don't have to wait the 20 seconds). The main reason I don't click on banner ads isn't because they're annoying but rather because they almost never advertise anything there that interests me. Cheap long-distance and on-line casinos are most of what I see; no thanks.
Make the ads relevent, let the users click past them with a minimum of hassle/inconvenience and make the site behind the ad useful and efficient (for those who do click through). Then you'll find success.
Just my $.02. Keep the change.
-Coach-
-Coach-
1)This isn't the same vehicle the engine will eventually be used in. If the fuselage of this test platform cracks that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about effects on the production aircraft.
2)The vehicle is going to get very hot and hit the cold water very hard. It may be difficult to tell, from whatever shards are left, what damage was suffered in flight and what was caused by the abrupt stop at the end of it.
-Coach-
It would be extraordinarily expensive and would take a lot of time to redesign this vehicle so that it could land. Since the purpose of this particular flight is to establish that the revolutionary engine works at all, such measures would be an unnecessary cost and delay.
Once they can confirm that the engine works, they can work on building that engine into a vehicle that has a controlled return.
-Coach-