If all Congressional documents were stored in a Subversion repository,
Homeland Security would positively short-circuit trying to follow up on
all of the suspicious emails from young DC residents saying things like "Hey, are you sure the latest pages are committed to Subversion yet?" and "Something just bombed in my sandbox, I'm going to have to nuke everything in sight and do an update!"
Sometime back during Cold War days, mid 1970s or so, I remember a brief flurry of interest in speculation that China could destroy the US West Coast by sending a huge seismic wave triggered by having the entire population of China jump from several feet off the ground in response to precisely timed radio signals.
It got some major media attention, but was debunked pretty quickly. I remember a quotation from someone who pointed out that the physics of the thing would require, at a minimum, dead weight hitting the ground, which would require the landings to be done stiff-kneed to avoid shock absorption; he observed that the most likely product of such an experiment would be the sound of 1 billion people screaming as they all hit the ground with locked knees.
i did follow up on the religious links provided. but none of them specifically mention they are under the GPL so i don't think they'd allow me to view the source code or modify them at will.
The Church of Reality claims explicitly to be an open-source religion under the terms of the GPL.
Re:it's a rather straightforward observation
on
Tim Bray Says RELAX
·
· Score: 1
xml is a b**ch to read
Like any other formalism, it's difficult until you get used to it. The more familiar you are with a particular XML tagset and markup conventions, the easier it is to pick out the relevant structures and information. I remember being apalled at the verbosity of XSLT when I first begin to use it, but nowadays if I'm working with well structured XSLT code (and color-coding in the editor) I can scan it pretty efficiently.
That said, a non-XML syntax is almost always going to be more human-friendly. Which is another advantage of RELAX NG, of course, since it has a compact syntax that translates back and forth without loss of information to the XML form of the language.
Those of us driving old clunkers with cassette decks are snickering, as we can purchase low-cost cassette adapters for iPod or generic MP3 players that take about five seconds to install or remove and don't suffer from interference like the FM transmitters.
I'm one of those odd folks who uses a portable audio device almost solely for listening to podcasts and audiobooks. And it's clear that SanDisk has basically written us off.
I've owned two versions of SanDisk's Digital Audio Player, the original 256MB version and the version 2 1GB model. Ironically, audiobook support decreased between the two versions. Version 1 supported Audible formats 2 through 4 (4 being the highest quality), Version 2 supports only 2 and 3. Version 1 would save your place in a file when you switched to the radio and back, Version 2 doesn't. Version 1 let you increase playback speed up to 130%, version 2 has no speed options. In other words, all of the spoken-word-friendly features were dropped.
Now the e280 appears to have no support for Audible format (though it may be undocumented; I did check the full PDF User's Manual), no bookmarking or other features designed for long spoken-word files.
My next MP3 device purchase is going to be an iPod Nano. Sorry, SanDisk, you've lost me.
The attack would come in waves. As things start to clam down after the first wave, another wave was to be launched.
On the radio this morning (a Washington, D.C., news station) there was reference to a planned 3 attacks over 3 days. I found that odd--if successful simultaneous detonations were carried out, wouldn't the plotters assume that security would immediately be tightened to the point where the chances of succeeding on subsequent days would be much lower?
The house near campus that was used for the exteriors as the Pi Delta Pi sorority house is now a very pleasant bed-and-breakfast. The owners have sensibly replaced the old lawn and water-intensive landscaping with native plants, but the porch from which the girls taunted the nerds is unchanged.
The Times of London has posted a solution derived from a hint by the judge:
After a few hours' excruciating scribbling, The Times finally decoded the judge's message. It should read: "Smithy Code Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought." Admiral John "Jackie" Fisher is widely regarded as the second most significant figure in the Royal Navy's history, after Nelson. He revolutionised sea warfare by introducing the first modern battleship, HMS Dreadnought.
I first interpreted "BSA" in your title as Boy Scouts of America...... and given the nature of Bush Administration appointments, it would have been about as likely.
Price. I've had about half-a-dozen conversations with strangers who saw me using my Rocket. They would be interested, I'd hand it to them so they could scroll pages, they'd be impressed, they'd ask about price and capacity and so forth. Then would come the question: "How much do the eBooks cost?" I'd answer "About the same as a hardbound for books that are not out in paper, about the same as a paperback for books that are in paperback." They'd give me a you-gotta-be-kidding look of disbelief and that would be that. End of story.
Price for new e-books can actually be pretty attractive these days. If I wanted to buy Neil Gaiman's latest novel, Anansi Boys (in fact I've just borrowed it from the library, cheapskate that I am), I could get the hardback from Amazon for $17 plus a couple dollars shipping. I could get the audiobook from Audible.com at the member price of $19.58 with no shipping cost. Or I could get the Palm (.pdb) e-book format that I generally use from Powells.com for $15.96, no tax or shipping cost.
Exactly right. Altevogt is the fellow who was lurking on the email list to which Mirecki sent the note about "fundies", and who then shared the email publicly in order to discredit Mirecki. Whether or not that tactic is ethical, he's hardly an objective observer.
And I can't believe that the townhall.com column is the transcript of an actual interview; it's obviously satire. We're supposed to believe that Mirecki listened patiently to a couple dozen questions and replied "no comment" to each one, rather than simply cutting short the conversation at the outset?
This podcast attracted a lot of listeners when it zoomed to #1 in the iTunes Music Store listing about three months ago. Its hosts (Derek and Swoopy) are bright and likeable, and its production values are great.
And it has been the locus of an amazing story over the last two months. Host Derek Colanduno, by no means a senior citizen (I'd guess he's in his early 30s), had a major stroke or aneurysm event at the beginning of September, that put him in intensive care in an induced coma for a week. For a day or two it was dicey whether he'd pull out of it. Co-host Swoopy broadcast an announcement, and then began posting Derek Updates on the show's blog. Collectively they form a detailed look at first slow, then rapid recovery from a brain injury. As of this writing, Derek has regained most of his physical ability and a good bit of his speech--he even recorded a brief intro to their latest podcast, released today.
Good people, good site.
Right. This is the back-end software used by Calendars.Net (which is slow, as the OP complained, because it hosts zillions of calendars).
I'm in a department of about 20 people, several of whom are fairly technophobic, and this is the only piece of communal software I can remember intutitive enough for end users that everyone wound up using it without complaint. (You do have to have a set-up person willing to RTFM in order to choose appropriate options and customizations. But that all requires little technical skill.)
Paul Martin of the University of Arizona, whose name has been synonymous with Pleistocene megafauna for decades (he first advanced the "Pleistocene overkill" theory of their extinction), was in the news several years ago for suggesting something like this. For example, see this talk at the American Museum of Natural History from 1998.
I'd Google for more references, but I have a plane to catch...
Slashdot Mirror
If all Congressional documents were stored in a Subversion repository, Homeland Security would positively short-circuit trying to follow up on all of the suspicious emails from young DC residents saying things like "Hey, are you sure the latest pages are committed to Subversion yet?" and "Something just bombed in my sandbox, I'm going to have to nuke everything in sight and do an update!"
Sometime back during Cold War days, mid 1970s or so, I remember a brief flurry of interest in speculation that China could destroy the US West Coast by sending a huge seismic wave triggered by having the entire population of China jump from several feet off the ground in response to precisely timed radio signals.
It got some major media attention, but was debunked pretty quickly. I remember a quotation from someone who pointed out that the physics of the thing would require, at a minimum, dead weight hitting the ground, which would require the landings to be done stiff-kneed to avoid shock absorption; he observed that the most likely product of such an experiment would be the sound of 1 billion people screaming as they all hit the ground with locked knees.
In the immortal words of Chicago's mayor Richard Daley: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder."
The Church of Reality claims explicitly to be an open-source religion under the terms of the GPL.
Like any other formalism, it's difficult until you get used to it. The more familiar you are with a particular XML tagset and markup conventions, the easier it is to pick out the relevant structures and information. I remember being apalled at the verbosity of XSLT when I first begin to use it, but nowadays if I'm working with well structured XSLT code (and color-coding in the editor) I can scan it pretty efficiently.
That said, a non-XML syntax is almost always going to be more human-friendly. Which is another advantage of RELAX NG, of course, since it has a compact syntax that translates back and forth without loss of information to the XML form of the language.
Those of us driving old clunkers with cassette decks are snickering, as we can purchase low-cost cassette adapters for iPod or generic MP3 players that take about five seconds to install or remove and don't suffer from interference like the FM transmitters.
I'm one of those odd folks who uses a portable audio device almost solely for listening to podcasts and audiobooks. And it's clear that SanDisk has basically written us off.
I've owned two versions of SanDisk's Digital Audio Player, the original 256MB version and the version 2 1GB model. Ironically, audiobook support decreased between the two versions. Version 1 supported Audible formats 2 through 4 (4 being the highest quality), Version 2 supports only 2 and 3. Version 1 would save your place in a file when you switched to the radio and back, Version 2 doesn't. Version 1 let you increase playback speed up to 130%, version 2 has no speed options. In other words, all of the spoken-word-friendly features were dropped.
Now the e280 appears to have no support for Audible format (though it may be undocumented; I did check the full PDF User's Manual), no bookmarking or other features designed for long spoken-word files.
My next MP3 device purchase is going to be an iPod Nano. Sorry, SanDisk, you've lost me.
The attack would come in waves. As things start to clam down after the first wave, another wave was to be launched.
On the radio this morning (a Washington, D.C., news station) there was reference to a planned 3 attacks over 3 days. I found that odd--if successful simultaneous detonations were carried out, wouldn't the plotters assume that security would immediately be tightened to the point where the chances of succeeding on subsequent days would be much lower?
What happened to the charges? I hope they were thrown out?
The house near campus that was used for the exteriors as the Pi Delta Pi sorority house is now a very pleasant bed-and-breakfast. The owners have sensibly replaced the old lawn and water-intensive landscaping with native plants, but the porch from which the girls taunted the nerds is unchanged.
P.Z. Myers complained not long ago about their idiotic gee-gosh-golly reporting of the umpteenth claim that the Ark has been located on Mt. Ararat (Sleuth closes in on Noah's Ark mystery").
The first boldface italicized letters actually spell out "Smithy code"; you can see the 'y' in section A.1.3 of the ruling (PDF).
I first interpreted "BSA" in your title as Boy Scouts of America... ... and given the nature of Bush Administration appointments, it would have been about as likely.
Mark Twain also saw wasp parasitism in particular as an argument against benevolent design. See, for example, his late sketch "Little Bessie".
Right-o. Heck, a quick check with Google would have shown that there's no such place as the "Oregon Institute of Technology".
There's a good (if a bit outdated) chapter on Skaggs in the Re/Search book Pranks!
Exactly right. Altevogt is the fellow who was lurking on the email list to which Mirecki sent the note about "fundies", and who then shared the email publicly in order to discredit Mirecki. Whether or not that tactic is ethical, he's hardly an objective observer.
And I can't believe that the townhall.com column is the transcript of an actual interview; it's obviously satire. We're supposed to believe that Mirecki listened patiently to a couple dozen questions and replied "no comment" to each one, rather than simply cutting short the conversation at the outset?
And it has been the locus of an amazing story over the last two months. Host Derek Colanduno, by no means a senior citizen (I'd guess he's in his early 30s), had a major stroke or aneurysm event at the beginning of September, that put him in intensive care in an induced coma for a week. For a day or two it was dicey whether he'd pull out of it. Co-host Swoopy broadcast an announcement, and then began posting Derek Updates on the show's blog. Collectively they form a detailed look at first slow, then rapid recovery from a brain injury. As of this writing, Derek has regained most of his physical ability and a good bit of his speech--he even recorded a brief intro to their latest podcast, released today. Good people, good site.
I like it too, but the advertising-to-content ratio is ridiculous! (Is there any software out there that will reliably strip ads from an MP3 file?)
Right. This is the back-end software used by Calendars.Net (which is slow, as the OP complained, because it hosts zillions of calendars).
I'm in a department of about 20 people, several of whom are fairly technophobic, and this is the only piece of communal software I can remember intutitive enough for end users that everyone wound up using it without complaint. (You do have to have a set-up person willing to RTFM in order to choose appropriate options and customizations. But that all requires little technical skill.)
(If I ran things, that max speed would be more like 5 mph. But then I'm a Joshua tree-hugger.)
I'd Google for more references, but I have a plane to catch...