Come on, what real proof is there the rule change is to be more "embarrassing"? It's utterly stupid on the face of it if you think AT ALL about airport security as it is, and will be in the near future:
1) There are not enough scanners to process traffic flow at any airport.
2) (the big one) only a handful of people get pat downs - the ones who fail the metal detector. Which you don't realize until AFTER you have gone through it, so how is a slightly more embarrassing pat-down which no-one even knows about going to make you want to choose a scanner? Since people assume they are not going to trigger the metal detector why would behavior change in the slightest?
Honestly, more and more SLashdot stores are devolving into utter paranoia. And not even the productive kind.
Pat-downs are given to those who fail either of the automatic methods, or to those who explicitly request opt-out from the backscatter xray.
I belong to the latter group, those who request opt-out. As it would be, hospitals and veterinary clinics have highly trained people with advanced degrees who, when taking any kind of medical imaging, are tracking exactly the exposure that their patients get (and over time). This, so as to minimize and manage the risks from being radiated. They also have people at hand who know how to deal with radiation burns etc.
Airports have.....the TSA. They're neither trained in radiation nor tracking exposure. As exposure is cumulative, there is a real risk.
The general advice has been around here, that if you have a melanoma in certain forms, you definitely should refuse backscatter x-ray because we simply do not know that it won't worsen it, and we suspect that it may.
Thus, having a (common form of) skin cancer sufficient reason for the TSA (the employees of which, for the vast majority, are not licensed to practice medicine) to present "more embarrassing" treatment.
I systematically refuse to go through backscatter x-ray, as I find it unduly invasive, and that it does nothing to further aircraft security. Sometimes the TSA agents ask, and I reply "on medical grounds" - as they are not physicians, they are not competent (and they start to know this) to discuss passengers' medical conditions.
And, for the record, I know of at least one sexual molestation lawsuit having been brought against a TSA agent and the TSA, who enjoyed the "pat-down" of a teenage girl a little too much. Note to TSA agents: if you want to group a teenage girl, pick one whose dad is not both a trial lawyer and just behind her in line.....
i want a solid mechanical link between the controls I'm pushing on and the control surfaces on the wings... That way, even if EVERY computer on the plane dies, I can still control the damn thing...
And yes IAAAP... (I Am An Airline Pilot)
Do you by "mechanical link" mean "hydraulic link", by any chance? I am personally not convinced that hydraulic control of surfaces is any less prone to problems than are electric control using localized actuators and possibly disjoint/redundant electric linkage through the fuselage. FBW is not my greatest worry a - a hydraulic failure/leak is hard[er] to recover from than is a computer failure [where you have redundant computers and channels, and possibly various restart options].
It's true, however, that the automatization of the flight deck has radically changed the role of a pilot -- I still haven't made up my mind if that's for better or for worse.
I was surprised, while living in France last year, that RedBull is illegal. I was even more surprised when they told me you can buy Poppers at clothing shops like nothing happens. Any Frenchie care to comment on it??
You asked for it, there you have it. I am not a Frenchie and can't speak for the availability of poppers -- but Red Bull *was* illegal due to its taurin content. The French equivalent of the FDA didn't think that it was possible to determine, based on available studies, if the product was safe, and was citing at the time (if I recall correctly) something about detected hyperactivity in animals who'd consumed high doses of taurine. In April 2008, in a neutered version (arginine instead of taurine and much less caffeine...) was approved for sale in France.
In, I think, later 2008, the unneutered Red Bull entered the French market: this time it was the EU that forced the French to accept it. A product sold in one EU country can legally be imported and sold in an EU country (or something to that effect), and Red Bull was/is sold in many (but not all) EU countries.
I've got a full-time job, a wife, and two kids. I scuba dive, play in a concert band, and play DnD once a week.
When, exactly, would I go out and join a soccer team? During naptime for the toddlers? In the evenings, when it's one of the rare days when neither my wife nor I are going out so we can spend some time together? Sure, I can bike to work, but I'm the one who drops the kids off at daycare. That means either using a trailer (sunny and warm days only) or biking when daycare's not in session.
Bring the Wii Fit into the equation, and I'm down 15 pounds. I can get a good set of cardio and strength work while the kids are napping or asleep.
Seriously, some people simply can't go outside some days.
Yeah, what he said....now, I do not have kids, but I have a spouse and a cat -- both of which need attention -- a job that requires me to travel about 60% of the year and I teach scuba diving on the side. In short, I spent plenty of time outside of the house already, and joining a soccer or other team sport team would be just impossible: I'd not be able to be there regularly due to an unpredictable travel-schedule, and so I'd make a horrible team-mate (not to mention, I'm a horrible soccer-player to begin with, making me even more of a boat-anchor for a soccer-team) and, frankly, what evenings/weekends I do have left, I'd rather spend with the spouse and the cat, than with a bunch of sweaty 40-something men chasing a ball.....
The nearest gym is about an hour away from where we live, btw., so one hour of workout would "cost" 3 hours of wall-clock-time. Just not cost-efficient.
Wanting to stay in relatively good health, we set aside a room in our house, and rebuilt into a gym -- principally a treadmill and some other exercise machines, and a wall-mounted TV. It allows - as notes Beardo the Bearded - that whenever either of us have got an hour available, we can get some exercise in without having to commit to trekking to the nearest gym. Often, it's of the form "hey, I was home first tonight, I'll toss the roast in the oven, then do an hour on the 'mill and some back-strengthening workout", and concurrently keeping up with what's wrong with the world on the TV.
We've got a WiiFit as well, and while that's great fun, I do not get the same "sweat" out of it nor do I manage to get my heart-rate high enough and exercise/strengthen my back. It's great for its Yoga-exercises, and a fun thing to do together (although, it'd have been cool had the WiiFit allowed for easier alternations between two players exercising together).
Anyways, when we were acquiring the treadmill, we were looking to see if there were more "fun" options than just "running at various paces and inclinations", but what we found was insufficient: either it was "more game than exercise" or it was "more flimsy" -- or the game just didn't seem like much fun after having tried them out once. TSo for us, and for now, it's the treadmill (with iFit training programs) + TV for the gym, and the WiiFit/WiiSport for having fun in the living room.
Now, just need to find a way of getting the cat to exercise as well....
Btw., "Beardo the Bearded", good job at dropping 15lb with the WiiFit! Keep it up!
nah, santa is - as all good kids know - a resident of Greenland...which, as we know, is Denmark. Now, if USAians insist that Santa lives on the pole, then it must follow that the North Pole is in Greenland. which mean that we Danish have gotten an allied in defending the fact that the North Pole belongs to us.
So thanks a lot. I'll ask santa to be extra generous to you this year;)
Look, Airbus is showing us images of bars and water fountains inside these planes. Boeing did the same thing when the 747 first came out 35 years or so ago. I have flown in a lot of 747s and have NEVER seena bar.
Not in a 747, but I believe that it was an Airbus A340-300 of Lufthansa, where I recently had a very plesant flight in a cabin with a bar. Granted, it wasn't a bar with a bartender as such, but with self-service and bar-chairs etc. Not that I'd use the bar more than out of curiousity: my fully-inclining seat was more comfy and with most passengers sleeping, the flight-attendant was bored out of his skin and happy to bring me what I wanted (and occupy the seat adjacent to mine to chat, to kill time).
The thing that I think the Airbus'es I've flown in have going for them is, that their cabins seem to be so much more comfy than their competitors. Granted, most Airbus'es are relatively new, and granted, the cabin-organization should be independant of the aircraft type (and as such, it should be possible to outfit a 777/747 in the same way as an A340), but for for the carriers I usually use, their Airbus'es just seem more comfy.
My biggest annoyance with the air-transports of today is....cabin-luggage. I'd LOVE to be able to check in laptop, camera and other fragile stuff in a secure fashion with a guarantee for delivery and a guarantee against theft and damages. Something along the lines of a standardized hard-case, which the passenger can "lock and check at the entrance" (and check-out at exit) of the airplane. I am sure that a system can be deviced. Most of the stuff I carry on board isn't going to be used in-flight, but is what's vital to have at the destination. However with the abysimal records of my luggage not arriving at the same time and/or destination as me (I'd say that about 50% of the time, my luggage and I litteraly part ways at the airport), I need to carry it on....
Anyone know a decent low-cost PDA with built-in keyboard, adequate speed/memory/storage, runs linux and can go wireless? Preferrably something that would sync up with kmail or evolution or something like that, too.
I was looking for that too, after having used a Psion series 5x for a long time. The Psion did all I needed, but no wifi, no bluetooth and no usb. So I looked....
Sony went ahead and released the Clie UX50, which had the gadget-factor, features and size -- but what I thought was a horrible keyboard. Still, with no other alternatives in my neck of the woods, I sprang for one almost right when they came out.
It's expensive, and the keyboard is not optimal, but it's much less bad than I've thought. And I swear by that PDA. I've gotten a quite good type-speed on the keyboard with exercise;)
I am in a job where I travel a lot. I usually bring a laptop to be able to get real work done while in transit or in the hotelroom -- but it is nice to just grab the stuff I need onto my PDA when I head off to meetings etc. and still be able to check email (over whatever is available: wifi or a cell-phone) while out.
Incidentially, the Clie also replaces the mp3-player and the portable DVD-player which I used to drag along while flying somewhere.
When my Sony burns out, I'll spring for another one in the same price-range. The usability/price-factor is quite high for me. It replaces several devices, and the price for the PDA is lower than the price for those devices combined.
I hope that someone will make a PDA/Smartphone in the same format as the Clie. That is: a Clie UX50 with build in GSM/CDMA capability. Bluetooth headset, of course. That'd be cool -- I could dump my cellphone.
I'm waiting, SonyEricsson....;)
The current generation of smartphones do not have (at least not what I have found) WiFi -- which is paramount to me, and the reason why for the moment, smartphones aren't for me.
But that's because NTP's patent is ridiculous. Who are they going to go after next? TabletPC users who happen to use a wireless connection? People who read E-mail through a handheld connected to their cell phone?
I say they (NTP) should take on Sony-Ericsson next. My latest phone from them (a T68i, in case anyone is interrested) comes with tcp/ip, pop3 and smtp support. It can automatically check my email every some timeinterval and notify me if anything new arrived (as if it was an incomming SMS). Also, I can read and send emails directly from it, connecting to my regular ISP.
I would be surprised if other cell phone manufacturers did not do something similar? Is this not the same as what NTP is suing RIM over? And if not, where's the fine line between what the "Blackberry" does and what this phone does with respect to the email stuff?
As far as I can gather, if the patent is not "ridiculous" as suggested by the parent poster (but I do not have the qualifications to see if it is, in any legan sense, ridiculous), then there would be a lot of money to be made from suing/licensing to cell-phone-manufacturers....
Does 802.11(b or g) enough bandwidth to handle that many people? Not that everyone has a WiFi connection, but when you provide ubiquitious access, the applications will be created that utilize it.
I don't think that 802.11 can handle more than a handful of users before it is swamped. I imagine that the city will be subdivided somehow so that broadcast traffic from one machine isn't repeated to every node in the city.
Well, at the IETF meetings (3 times a year), a Hilton hotel is normally wi-fi'ed for the duration of the meeting. It seems to have no problems supporting a few thousand geeks with laptops. Yeah, the netork is often tuned during the meeting when the usage patterns are determined. I assume that this is what the initial pilot periode is about in Paris.
So I'd say that based on past experience, a network can be engineered to support massive amounts of users. How many exactly I dunno....
When email was first designed it was a very open system with no real rules. What worked was good enough. The smtp protocol needs to be rewritten into something more advanced (amtp?) in order to prevent spam at the lowest (technological) level.
Just out of curiousity: what features would you require in your newly envisioned "amtp", that smtp of today is lacking? The basic requirement for me is to have an address, to which anyone can send mail. That, as others have said, leaves me open to receiving spam. How would "amtp" improve on this?
Can't speak for anything but my own experience, but I would also strongly encourage real education over vendor certificates.
For one thing, what I learned in the higher educational systems was probably not directly marketable skills, but rather a method of thinking and working. An amount of logic and patience. And I got to know a lot of cool guys who today are scattered over the world working with interresting stuff (Hey, colleage is a good way to start networking).
Also, at the more decent colleages, they will teach you the primes of networking and the wheres and whys of the protocols - rather than the hows of specific vendor solutions. Same goes for programming. Even as a non-programmer, the basic ideas of programming comes handy, and even though you may learn some weird academic languages, the principles will also apply in bash and perl.
The final thing is, that while a colleage education more or less always will remain valid, a vendor certificate becomes obsolete: the market shifts from one vendor to another, new products emerge and others disappear etc. So while vendor certifications may buy you big money now, they may not be there for the long term.
I've seen a sufficient number of people starting in sysadm positions from nothing but high-school and industrial experience - and a few vendor certificates. I've also seen the same persons spend unreasonably long time puzzled over things (mainly networking-wise, I admit), which were outside of what their certification course had taught them.
Today, I'd be reluctant to hire someone whos only credentials are experience and vendor certificates. Of course, there are naturals for whom colleage may not do too much. I've yet to come across any, though. And, if nothing else, a colleage diploma tells me that the person is at least persistant enough to start something, and finish it. That alone is to appreciate.
Also, a colleage diploma is more of a wildcard. Right now, you may think that system administration is all you want to do. However in 10 years, you may see the world differently. I think that a colleage diploma would make it easier for you to eventually transit into a different type of position. I think that, if nothing else, this argument should carry some weight. I, for one, hadn't envisioned that I would end where I am 10 years ago. Actually, I'd probably have sworn I'd never end where I am...:)
So go to colleage and get a diploma. Meanwhile, if you have time, or afterwards while in your first job, supplement with a couple of certificates. That would make you a good candidate to hire...
Hardly surprising, since I'm on a LAN Internet connection full of poorly configured Windows Notworking hosts spamming each other (and potentially the entire Internet, since they use 255.255.255.255, although I suspect/hope my college filters NetBIOS out at the router..
Well, RFC1812 specifies, that packages sent to the "limited broadcast address" (255.255.255.255) MUST NOT be forwarded by any router. Hence, unless your router(s) are seriously broken/misconfigured, the rest of the internet should be fairly safe;)
In general, RFC1812 is interresting reading, dictating how an IPv4-router should behave;)
How long before phones start getting hacked or spread MS LookOut worms? How long before phone spamming becomes the norm?
Actually, this is happening allready. In France, Bouyges Telecom (a large tele operator) were frequently spamming my mobile with adds from different companies (e.g. Pizza Hut). It turned out to be an "opt-out" thing that they do to all new customers. After calling their customer service (and waiting a periode of 3 weeks "for technical reasons" - yeah, right!) the spamming stopped.
What, in reality, was more annoying was that they also spammed my voice mail in the same way: the phone would indicate a message, I'd dial (and pay the per minute charge) to listen, only to find that it was yet another piece of spam ("This week at Pizza Hut, you can get...."). Again, it was possible to "opt out".
It's worth noticing, that this was not on some "you get it cheap if you accept spam" subscription, but rather on their "pro" subscription....
You're right - and it exists. Routing protocols that would make such things work exists for so-called MANETS (Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks), being developed by the IETF.
Working in this area myself, I'd like to point to http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/manet-charter. ht ml, which is the IETF-working group dealing with MANET's.
Now, for the shameless plug: A link to the OLSR routing protocol for MANET's, which is showing promising results. Implementations (downloadable, with sourcecode etc. of the routing deamon) are available (drop voop@cs.auc.dk an email if interrested in the code - the www-server is currently not responding).
And that's even before we move beyond our current capabilities! Just by eliminating flaws like disease and infirmity, we increase our race's fitness massively, making our children better equipped to deal with a world that changes faster and faster each year. And as we move away from the Earth and into new environments, genetic engineering will allow us to adapt ourselves to fit those environments, meaning the human race can thrive for ever...
That's all fine and well, and I believe that noone disputes that genetic engineering has loads of positive prospects......however it's not the core of the debate, really.
If engaging in genetic engineering pratices, there will be a hard - if not impossible - task in seperating rational desires for improvement from "religious" (in lack of a better term) desires. Would it, for example, be an improvement or not if it was possible to genetically engineer such that homosexuality was to disappear? How 'bout left-handedness? Or bad taste in music;) ?
My point is, that while I am not against genetic engineering as such, I find it hard myself to figure out where to draw the line between objective "improvements" and just "adjustments according to my personal taste" (or religion or some such). Much more would I be reluctant - if not directly opposing - to trusting someone else (the genetics, the governments or something) to draw that line.
...the better for all of us. It deserves to be decently buried at midnight in an unmarked grave, but that's about all.
Well, currently I need a N4 around. For some odd reason, my banks homebanking system consistantly makes Mozilla hang. At least with N4, I have a chance of using it before it crashes.
It's rather odd, though. The system is Java-based, yet with the java-plugin in mozilla, the behavior is roughly as follows: the java-applet loads, then starts, then mozilla stops rendering anything but the java-applet, then the java-applet hangs.
So while Mozilla has numerous good things, then from a strict users point of view, it's just not ready to replace N4,
All I want is a "Netscape 4.8X". A slightly more stable version of 4.76 (which is a LOT better than 4.70) and with some of the motif gui bugs fixed. Then I'd be set for life... or at least another 18 - 24 months.
So what you want is Mozilla.6. My experiences thus far is, that if you stick to the www-browsing part, it surpasses Netscape in stability. The pages I have tested thus far (which usually crashes Netscape 4.76 giving one of those "Xvidget size incorrect" or whatever messages) have not managed to kill.6 - yet.
Wow! I managed to get Mozilla.6 just before it was announced on/. and before the servers are/.'ed.
Anyways, contrary to previous milestones and nightly builds, this version installed smoothly on my laptop (running Debian) - and seems to run moderately fine. I have tried on some otherwise troublesome URL's, which look surprisingly good.
There are small rendering glitches, such as when writing this text in the "Comment" textfield on slashdot. If I fill out a line, ending a word exactly on the last character in the field, then the "space" before the next word will be in the beginning of the next line. It looks funny, but is hardly annoying.
The browser looks slick, as does the mail&news component. However mail&news seems to be something I will leave with pine for a while. I tried to connect Nozilla.6 to my local leafnode (no, don't bother...it's behind a filtering router). Nozilla read fine the grouplist, I subscribed and even read 3-4 postings. Then everything got stuck, mozilla eating up all the cpu-time it possibly could and I had to -9 it. I tried a few times with roughly the same result. I didn't bother to check the mail functionalities.
So while it may not be ready for prime-time on all fronts, then it cirtanly seems to have replaced Netscape as my browser. Ohh, wait - Mozilla IS netscape. Nevermind, it is a fine product thus far.
The problem with Sun hardware is that it's simply too expensive for what it does.
While you no doubt are right in many respects, I would like to challenge your statement on one end: reliability. Having been working in an almost exclusive Sparc/Solaris-shop, which then (due to the costs of hardware) graduately moved towards an Intel/Solaris-platform, I have also seen the maintenance costs and the downtime increase. When purchasing (almost) top-of-the-line server-hardware based on the Intel/PC-architecture, then the reliability may come close to that of Sun/Sparc. But then again, so does the price.
For regular office and lab workstations, reliability might not be too much of an issue for most (after all, a lot of people aer used to 3-4 reboots/day from whatever other OS they are running at home). However in a tightly administrated setup, where ordinary users have no privileges to reboot machines, Sun/Sparc-hardware does have its advantage over Intel/PC-equivalents. Sure, it costs more - but so does network administrators.
Now, for me - at home - I have an old Sparc Classic. Equipped with an extra netcard and some large SCSI-disks and a dat-drive, it makes for a decent file-server and acts as a filtering router between my local network and that of my upstream. The machine, while old - even ancient by todays terms - has no problems dealing with the at times rather intensive IO-load it is subject to. This due to the (then) innovative S-bus and crossbar-switch, which was default in Sun-gear (at at time when the ISA bus was the hottest in PC's). Even today, Sun's larger machines (creator, enterprise) are equiped with the same io-architecture, making them well suited for io-intensive tasks. IMHO, the IO-architecture of most Intel-based systems I have seen is no match for that of the Sun's.
Of course, Sun has released PC's also (Ultra 5, Ultra 10) which are little but a PC with a non-intel-compatible CPU but with all the defects of the PC-architecture (the PCI-bus, to name one such defect). Choosing between such a Sun Ultra 5 (f.eks.) and a Pentium-III-based PC wouldn't be too hard....
I guess an important thing is to emphasize what it is that should be "distributed". Allready, most operating systems function "distributed", i.e. have the ability to access remote file systems, remote printers, support execution of a given process on a given remote "machine" etc. This is one form of "distributed operating system", which has proven to be well functioning in many settings. This is imho basically "distributed ressource sharing". A little more advanced is the case of one process, executing on one CPU in on one "machine" utilizing memory in another "machine". Still, this is not far out (see f.eks. Berkeley NOW or some such project). This is basically a matter of providing some services and presenting them in a way such that they appear as if they were "local" services.
Another, different "wish" is the ability to "execute any one process on 4½ processor". Which basically amounts to two issues, namely writing applications such that they can take advantage of an arbitrary number of underlaying processors (it's not gonna do much good to take a strictly sequential program and execute on any "multiprocessor-like" platform). The other issue involves automatic parallelization of programs by the operating system - something which is not a trivial matter, and often hardly worth it in "real applications". This basically amounts to providing a set of "handles", usefull for the programmer when writing a process and used by the operating system when scheduling and executing the process. Such exists allready both in academia (The Actor Foundry or Emerald are examples hereof) or in "real life" with MPI et.al.
But the "dream" of having an operating system which is just "undefined distributed" and which is able to execute "just any" process distributed is not realistic - for many reasons, including those above....Unfortunately it is also a common "wish" to see caught out of the blue...
Nonsense, thinking that we are somehow able to improve upon the Divine plan of God is hubris of the highest order. God's plan has given us the wonderful variety of life that we see today, not some "scientist" more interested than having his name on a paper than the ethical and moral implications of their work.
I know I am entering the really deep water here - peoples belifs are to be taken seriously - but I beg to offer a slightly different opinion on this. Not a flame - just a slightly different opinion...
First, one could argue that genetic engineering might be part of this "God's" plan in the first place. After all, "God" being a (the) supreme being, then everything must be in accordance with this beings schedule, no? Including the scientists work on genetic engineering?
Secondly, I am much more afraid of what people on this planet might go about doing with such a technology, than I am of what "God" might do. As other posters have pointed out, there are plenty of madmen out there, who would make super-{soldiers|workers|scientists|whatever} (no need to mention a trivial thing such as "super-sports-stars", which has been tried for years through doping etc). Ok, in accordance with my first point, actions of such madmen may just be the "punishment of God" for tampering with the genes. However I do have a hard time believing that a supreme being would include in his plan " 1) make mankind do something clever, 2) punish mankind for 1)".
Thirdly, I believe that there is more to it than that scientists are only aiming for "getting their name on a paper". Being in science myself, I know that publication is a major goal for any scientist (the only measure you are evaluated against is your publication rate, usually). I also agree, that during the process of researching, very little concirn is usually given to the ethical implications of the research. To me, personally, and probably to a lot of others, this is because...well, I am not personally qualified to evaluate such. Blinded by the "coolness" of some discovery and all the wonderfull things this discovery will do, I doubt that a scientist is much capable of taking two steps backwards and saying "hey, this may be bad, I better not publish". After all, scientists are only humans (maybe we should investigate genetically engineering better and more ethical scientists to prevent ideas such as "genetic engineering" from emerging?).
Fourthly, I believe that for some scientist to decide against publishing a discovery of some sort or should decide against researching some area based on "ethics" is just as harmfull - and unethical. Preventing the world from learning secrets of life might also be preventing the world from becomming a better place to live.
That is, not saying that all new discoveries are good. They are not. But they should not be dismissed solely on the basis of being "new" and potentially applicable for "unethical" purposes. Everything can be applied in both a good and a bad way...
Slashdot Mirror
Emminent scolars in the field of radiation and medicine do not agree with the conclusions that the wikipedia information that you present asserts. See, for example, this letter from UCSF faculty in bilogy and medicine, here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35498347/UCSF-letter-to-Holdren-concerning-health-risks-of-full-body-scanner-TSA-screenings-4-6-2010
With all due respect, I would assume the sigtanators to this letter to certainly not be "purposefully ignorant" on this matter.
Come on, what real proof is there the rule change is to be more "embarrassing"? It's utterly stupid on the face of it if you think AT ALL about airport security as it is, and will be in the near future:
1) There are not enough scanners to process traffic flow at any airport.
2) (the big one) only a handful of people get pat downs - the ones who fail the metal detector. Which you don't realize until AFTER you have gone through it, so how is a slightly more embarrassing pat-down which no-one even knows about going to make you want to choose a scanner? Since people assume they are not going to trigger the metal detector why would behavior change in the slightest?
Honestly, more and more SLashdot stores are devolving into utter paranoia. And not even the productive kind.
Pat-downs are given to those who fail either of the automatic methods, or to those who explicitly request opt-out from the backscatter xray.
I belong to the latter group, those who request opt-out. As it would be, hospitals and veterinary clinics have highly trained people with advanced degrees who, when taking any kind of medical imaging, are tracking exactly the exposure that their patients get (and over time). This, so as to minimize and manage the risks from being radiated. They also have people at hand who know how to deal with radiation burns etc.
Airports have.....the TSA. They're neither trained in radiation nor tracking exposure. As exposure is cumulative, there is a real risk.
The general advice has been around here, that if you have a melanoma in certain forms, you definitely should refuse backscatter x-ray because we simply do not know that it won't worsen it, and we suspect that it may.
Thus, having a (common form of) skin cancer sufficient reason for the TSA (the employees of which, for the vast majority, are not licensed to practice medicine) to present "more embarrassing" treatment.
I systematically refuse to go through backscatter x-ray, as I find it unduly invasive, and that it does nothing to further aircraft security. Sometimes the TSA agents ask, and I reply "on medical grounds" - as they are not physicians, they are not competent (and they start to know this) to discuss passengers' medical conditions.
And, for the record, I know of at least one sexual molestation lawsuit having been brought against a TSA agent and the TSA, who enjoyed the "pat-down" of a teenage girl a little too much. Note to TSA agents: if you want to group a teenage girl, pick one whose dad is not both a trial lawyer and just behind her in line .....
Do you by "mechanical link" mean "hydraulic link", by any chance? I am personally not convinced that hydraulic control of surfaces is any less prone to problems than are electric control using localized actuators and possibly disjoint/redundant electric linkage through the fuselage. FBW is not my greatest worry a - a hydraulic failure/leak is hard[er] to recover from than is a computer failure [where you have redundant computers and channels, and possibly various restart options].
It's true, however, that the automatization of the flight deck has radically changed the role of a pilot -- I still haven't made up my mind if that's for better or for worse.
You asked for it, there you have it. I am not a Frenchie and can't speak for the availability of poppers -- but Red Bull *was* illegal due to its taurin content. The French equivalent of the FDA didn't think that it was possible to determine, based on available studies, if the product was safe, and was citing at the time (if I recall correctly) something about detected hyperactivity in animals who'd consumed high doses of taurine. In April 2008, in a neutered version (arginine instead of taurine and much less caffeine...) was approved for sale in France.
In, I think, later 2008, the unneutered Red Bull entered the French market: this time it was the EU that forced the French to accept it. A product sold in one EU country can legally be imported and sold in an EU country (or something to that effect), and Red Bull was/is sold in many (but not all) EU countries.
Yeah, what he said....now, I do not have kids, but I have a spouse and a cat -- both of which need attention -- a job that requires me to travel about 60% of the year and I teach scuba diving on the side. In short, I spent plenty of time outside of the house already, and joining a soccer or other team sport team would be just impossible: I'd not be able to be there regularly due to an unpredictable travel-schedule, and so I'd make a horrible team-mate (not to mention, I'm a horrible soccer-player to begin with, making me even more of a boat-anchor for a soccer-team) and, frankly, what evenings/weekends I do have left, I'd rather spend with the spouse and the cat, than with a bunch of sweaty 40-something men chasing a ball.....
The nearest gym is about an hour away from where we live, btw., so one hour of workout would "cost" 3 hours of wall-clock-time. Just not cost-efficient.
Wanting to stay in relatively good health, we set aside a room in our house, and rebuilt into a gym -- principally a treadmill and some other exercise machines, and a wall-mounted TV. It allows - as notes Beardo the Bearded - that whenever either of us have got an hour available, we can get some exercise in without having to commit to trekking to the nearest gym. Often, it's of the form "hey, I was home first tonight, I'll toss the roast in the oven, then do an hour on the 'mill and some back-strengthening workout", and concurrently keeping up with what's wrong with the world on the TV.
We've got a WiiFit as well, and while that's great fun, I do not get the same "sweat" out of it nor do I manage to get my heart-rate high enough and exercise/strengthen my back. It's great for its Yoga-exercises, and a fun thing to do together (although, it'd have been cool had the WiiFit allowed for easier alternations between two players exercising together).
Anyways, when we were acquiring the treadmill, we were looking to see if there were more "fun" options than just "running at various paces and inclinations", but what we found was insufficient: either it was "more game than exercise" or it was "more flimsy" -- or the game just didn't seem like much fun after having tried them out once. TSo for us, and for now, it's the treadmill (with iFit training programs) + TV for the gym, and the WiiFit/WiiSport for having fun in the living room.
Now, just need to find a way of getting the cat to exercise as well....
Btw., "Beardo the Bearded", good job at dropping 15lb with the WiiFit! Keep it up!
nah, santa is - as all good kids know - a resident of Greenland...which, as we know, is Denmark. Now, if USAians insist that Santa lives on the pole, then it must follow that the North Pole is in Greenland. which mean that we Danish have gotten an allied in defending the fact that the North Pole belongs to us.
So thanks a lot. I'll ask santa to be extra generous to you this year ;)
Soon we'll not be required to X-ray our shoes when people forget why we started in the first place
why did we (well, you) start that in the first place?
Clue: X-ray machines at airports do not detect plastic explosives.
Ahh, who cares, it makes it seem like security, so it comforts mr and ms Kettle.
Look, Airbus is showing us images of bars and water fountains inside these planes. Boeing did the same thing when the 747 first came out 35 years or so ago. I have flown in a lot of 747s and have NEVER seena bar.
Not in a 747, but I believe that it was an Airbus A340-300 of Lufthansa, where I recently had a very plesant flight in a cabin with a bar. Granted, it wasn't a bar with a bartender as such, but with self-service and bar-chairs etc. Not that I'd use the bar more than out of curiousity: my fully-inclining seat was more comfy and with most passengers sleeping, the flight-attendant was bored out of his skin and happy to bring me what I wanted (and occupy the seat adjacent to mine to chat, to kill time).
The thing that I think the Airbus'es I've flown in have going for them is, that their cabins seem to be so much more comfy than their competitors. Granted, most Airbus'es are relatively new, and granted, the cabin-organization should be independant of the aircraft type (and as such, it should be possible to outfit a 777/747 in the same way as an A340), but for for the carriers I usually use, their Airbus'es just seem more comfy.
My biggest annoyance with the air-transports of today is....cabin-luggage. I'd LOVE to be able to check in laptop, camera and other fragile stuff in a secure fashion with a guarantee for delivery and a guarantee against theft and damages. Something along the lines of a standardized hard-case, which the passenger can "lock and check at the entrance" (and check-out at exit) of the airplane. I am sure that a system can be deviced. Most of the stuff I carry on board isn't going to be used in-flight, but is what's vital to have at the destination. However with the abysimal records of my luggage not arriving at the same time and/or destination as me (I'd say that about 50% of the time, my luggage and I litteraly part ways at the airport), I need to carry it on....
Anyone know a decent low-cost PDA with built-in keyboard, adequate speed/memory/storage, runs linux and can go wireless? Preferrably something that would sync up with kmail or evolution or something like that, too.
I was looking for that too, after having used a Psion series 5x for a long time. The Psion did all I needed, but no wifi, no bluetooth and no usb. So I looked....
Sony went ahead and released the Clie UX50, which had the gadget-factor, features and size -- but what I thought was a horrible keyboard. Still, with no other alternatives in my neck of the woods, I sprang for one almost right when they came out.
It's expensive, and the keyboard is not optimal, but it's much less bad than I've thought. And I swear by that PDA. I've gotten a quite good type-speed on the keyboard with exercise
I am in a job where I travel a lot. I usually bring a laptop to be able to get real work done while in transit or in the hotelroom -- but it is nice to just grab the stuff I need onto my PDA when I head off to meetings etc. and still be able to check email (over whatever is available: wifi or a cell-phone) while out.
Incidentially, the Clie also replaces the mp3-player and the portable DVD-player which I used to drag along while flying somewhere.
When my Sony burns out, I'll spring for another one in the same price-range. The usability/price-factor is quite high for me. It replaces several devices, and the price for the PDA is lower than the price for those devices combined.
I hope that someone will make a PDA/Smartphone in the same format as the Clie. That is: a Clie UX50 with build in GSM/CDMA capability. Bluetooth headset, of course. That'd be cool -- I could dump my cellphone.
I'm waiting, SonyEricsson....;)
The current generation of smartphones do not have (at least not what I have found) WiFi -- which is paramount to me, and the reason why for the moment, smartphones aren't for me.
Yes, the IETF does accept proposals which are subject to IPR claims in whatever form.
Here's for more information about the official IPR position of the IETF:
http://www.ietf.org/ipr.html
But that's because NTP's patent is ridiculous. Who are they going to go after next? TabletPC users who happen to use a wireless connection? People who read E-mail through a handheld connected to their cell phone?
I say they (NTP) should take on Sony-Ericsson next. My latest phone from them (a T68i, in case anyone is interrested) comes with tcp/ip, pop3 and smtp support. It can automatically check my email every some timeinterval and notify me if anything new arrived (as if it was an incomming SMS). Also, I can read and send emails directly from it, connecting to my regular ISP.
I would be surprised if other cell phone manufacturers did not do something similar? Is this not the same as what NTP is suing RIM over? And if not, where's the fine line between what the "Blackberry" does and what this phone does with respect to the email stuff?
As far as I can gather, if the patent is not "ridiculous" as suggested by the parent poster (but I do not have the qualifications to see if it is, in any legan sense, ridiculous), then there would be a lot of money to be made from suing/licensing to cell-phone-manufacturers....
Does 802.11(b or g) enough bandwidth to handle that many people? Not that everyone has a WiFi connection, but when you provide ubiquitious access, the applications will be created that utilize it.
I don't think that 802.11 can handle more than a handful of users before it is swamped. I imagine that the city will be subdivided somehow so that broadcast traffic from one machine isn't repeated to every node in the city.
Well, at the IETF meetings (3 times a year), a Hilton hotel is normally wi-fi'ed for the duration of the meeting. It seems to have no problems supporting a few thousand geeks with laptops. Yeah, the netork is often tuned during the meeting when the usage patterns are determined. I assume that this is what the initial pilot periode is about in Paris.
So I'd say that based on past experience, a network can be engineered to support massive amounts of users. How many exactly I dunno....
When email was first designed it was a very open system with no real rules. What worked was good enough. The smtp protocol needs to be rewritten into something more advanced (amtp?) in order to prevent spam at the lowest (technological) level.
Just out of curiousity: what features would you require in your newly envisioned "amtp", that smtp of today is lacking? The basic requirement for me is to have an address, to which anyone can send mail. That, as others have said, leaves me open to receiving spam. How would "amtp" improve on this?
Yahoo has seen the light and has stopped their auction services in every country except America.
Not true. At least in Denmark, yahoo are still running auctions. The volume, of course, still being much less than that of eBay.
Can't speak for anything but my own experience, but I would also strongly encourage real education over vendor certificates.
For one thing, what I learned in the higher educational systems was probably not directly marketable skills, but rather a method of thinking and working. An amount of logic and patience. And I got to know a lot of cool guys who today are scattered over the world working with interresting stuff (Hey, colleage is a good way to start networking).
Also, at the more decent colleages, they will teach you the primes of networking and the wheres and whys of the protocols - rather than the hows of specific vendor solutions. Same goes for programming. Even as a non-programmer, the basic ideas of programming comes handy, and even though you may learn some weird academic languages, the principles will also apply in bash and perl.
The final thing is, that while a colleage education more or less always will remain valid, a vendor certificate becomes obsolete: the market shifts from one vendor to another, new products emerge and others disappear etc. So while vendor certifications may buy you big money now, they may not be there for the long term.
I've seen a sufficient number of people starting in sysadm positions from nothing but high-school and industrial experience - and a few vendor certificates. I've also seen the same persons spend unreasonably long time puzzled over things (mainly networking-wise, I admit), which were outside of what their certification course had taught them.
Today, I'd be reluctant to hire someone whos only credentials are experience and vendor certificates. Of course, there are naturals for whom colleage may not do too much. I've yet to come across any, though. And, if nothing else, a colleage diploma tells me that the person is at least persistant enough to start something, and finish it. That alone is to appreciate.
Also, a colleage diploma is more of a wildcard. Right now, you may think that system administration is all you want to do. However in 10 years, you may see the world differently. I think that a colleage diploma would make it easier for you to eventually transit into a different type of position. I think that, if nothing else, this argument should carry some weight. I, for one, hadn't envisioned that I would end where I am 10 years ago. Actually, I'd probably have sworn I'd never end where I am...:)
So go to colleage and get a diploma. Meanwhile, if you have time, or afterwards while in your first job, supplement with a couple of certificates. That would make you a good candidate to hire...
Hardly surprising, since I'm on a LAN Internet connection full of poorly configured Windows Notworking hosts spamming each other (and potentially the entire Internet, since they use 255.255.255.255, although I suspect/hope my college filters NetBIOS out at the router..
Well, RFC1812 specifies, that packages sent to the "limited broadcast address" (255.255.255.255) MUST NOT be forwarded by any router. Hence, unless your router(s) are seriously broken/misconfigured, the rest of the internet should be fairly safe
In general, RFC1812 is interresting reading, dictating how an IPv4-router should behave
How long before phones start getting hacked or spread MS LookOut worms? How long before phone spamming becomes the norm?
Actually, this is happening allready. In France, Bouyges Telecom (a large tele operator) were frequently spamming my mobile with adds from different companies (e.g. Pizza Hut). It turned out to be an "opt-out" thing that they do to all new customers. After calling their customer service (and waiting a periode of 3 weeks "for technical reasons" - yeah, right!) the spamming stopped.
What, in reality, was more annoying was that they also spammed my voice mail in the same way: the phone would indicate a message, I'd dial (and pay the per minute charge) to listen, only to find that it was yet another piece of spam ("This week at Pizza Hut, you can get...."). Again, it was possible to "opt out".
It's worth noticing, that this was not on some "you get it cheap if you accept spam" subscription, but rather on their "pro" subscription....
You're right - and it exists. Routing protocols that would make such things work exists for so-called MANETS (Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks), being developed by the IETF.
Working in this area myself, I'd like to point to
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/manet-charter
Now, for the shameless plug: A link to the OLSR routing protocol for MANET's, which is showing promising results. Implementations (downloadable, with sourcecode etc. of the routing deamon) are available (drop voop@cs.auc.dk an email if interrested in the code - the www-server is currently not responding).
And that's even before we move beyond our current capabilities! Just by eliminating flaws like disease and infirmity, we increase our race's fitness massively, making our children better equipped to deal with a world that changes faster and faster each year. And as we move away from the Earth and into new environments, genetic engineering will allow us to adapt ourselves to fit those environments, meaning the human race can thrive for ever...
That's all fine and well, and I believe that noone disputes that genetic engineering has loads of positive prospects......however it's not the core of the debate, really.
If engaging in genetic engineering pratices, there will be a hard - if not impossible - task in seperating rational desires for improvement from "religious" (in lack of a better term) desires. Would it, for example, be an improvement or not if it was possible to genetically engineer such that homosexuality was to disappear? How 'bout left-handedness? Or bad taste in music
My point is, that while I am not against genetic engineering as such, I find it hard myself to figure out where to draw the line between objective "improvements" and just "adjustments according to my personal taste" (or religion or some such). Much more would I be reluctant - if not directly opposing - to trusting someone else (the genetics, the governments or something) to draw that line.
Well, currently I need a N4 around. For some odd reason, my banks homebanking system consistantly makes Mozilla hang. At least with N4, I have a chance of using it before it crashes.
It's rather odd, though. The system is Java-based, yet with the java-plugin in mozilla, the behavior is roughly as follows: the java-applet loads, then starts, then mozilla stops rendering anything but the java-applet, then the java-applet hangs.
So while Mozilla has numerous good things, then from a strict users point of view, it's just not ready to replace N4,
Ohh, did I mention...I'm on Linux...
All I want is a "Netscape 4.8X". A slightly more stable version of 4.76 (which is a LOT better than 4.70) and with some of the motif gui bugs fixed. Then I'd be set for life... or at least another 18 - 24 months.
So what you want is Mozilla
Wow! I managed to get Mozilla .6 just before it was announced on /. and before the servers are /.'ed.
.6 to my local leafnode (no, don't bother...it's behind a filtering router). Nozilla read fine the grouplist, I subscribed and even read 3-4 postings. Then everything got stuck, mozilla eating up all the cpu-time it possibly could and I had to -9 it. I tried a few times with roughly the same result. I didn't bother to check the mail functionalities.
Anyways, contrary to previous milestones and nightly builds, this version installed smoothly on my laptop (running Debian) - and seems to run moderately fine. I have tried on some otherwise troublesome URL's, which look surprisingly good.
There are small rendering glitches, such as when writing this text in the "Comment" textfield on slashdot. If I fill out a line, ending a word exactly on the last character in the field, then the "space" before the next word will be in the beginning of the next line. It looks funny, but is hardly annoying.
The browser looks slick, as does the mail&news component. However mail&news seems to be something I will leave with pine for a while. I tried to connect Nozilla
So while it may not be ready for prime-time on all fronts, then it cirtanly seems to have replaced Netscape as my browser. Ohh, wait - Mozilla IS netscape. Nevermind, it is a fine product thus far.
While you no doubt are right in many respects, I would like to challenge your statement on one end: reliability. Having been working in an almost exclusive Sparc/Solaris-shop, which then (due to the costs of hardware) graduately moved towards an Intel/Solaris-platform, I have also seen the maintenance costs and the downtime increase. When purchasing (almost) top-of-the-line server-hardware based on the Intel/PC-architecture, then the reliability may come close to that of Sun/Sparc. But then again, so does the price.
For regular office and lab workstations, reliability might not be too much of an issue for most (after all, a lot of people aer used to 3-4 reboots/day from whatever other OS they are running at home). However in a tightly administrated setup, where ordinary users have no privileges to reboot machines, Sun/Sparc-hardware does have its advantage over Intel/PC-equivalents. Sure, it costs more - but so does network administrators.
Now, for me - at home - I have an old Sparc Classic. Equipped with an extra netcard and some large SCSI-disks and a dat-drive, it makes for a decent file-server and acts as a filtering router between my local network and that of my upstream. The machine, while old - even ancient by todays terms - has no problems dealing with the at times rather intensive IO-load it is subject to. This due to the (then) innovative S-bus and crossbar-switch, which was default in Sun-gear (at at time when the ISA bus was the hottest in PC's). Even today, Sun's larger machines (creator, enterprise) are equiped with the same io-architecture, making them well suited for io-intensive tasks. IMHO, the IO-architecture of most Intel-based systems I have seen is no match for that of the Sun's.
Of course, Sun has released PC's also (Ultra 5, Ultra 10) which are little but a PC with a non-intel-compatible CPU but with all the defects of the PC-architecture (the PCI-bus, to name one such defect). Choosing between such a Sun Ultra 5 (f.eks.) and a Pentium-III-based PC wouldn't be too hard....
I guess an important thing is to emphasize what it is that should be "distributed". Allready, most operating systems function "distributed", i.e. have the ability to access remote file systems, remote printers, support execution of a given process on a given remote "machine" etc. This is one form of "distributed operating system", which has proven to be well functioning in many settings. This is imho basically "distributed ressource sharing". A little more advanced is the case of one process, executing on one CPU in on one "machine" utilizing memory in another "machine". Still, this is not far out (see f.eks. Berkeley NOW or some such project). This is basically a matter of providing some services and presenting them in a way such that they appear as if they were "local" services.
Another, different "wish" is the ability to "execute any one process on 4½ processor". Which basically amounts to two issues, namely writing applications such that they can take advantage of an arbitrary number of underlaying processors (it's not gonna do much good to take a strictly sequential program and execute on any "multiprocessor-like" platform). The other issue involves automatic parallelization of programs by the operating system - something which is not a trivial matter, and often hardly worth it in "real applications". This basically amounts to providing a set of "handles", usefull for the programmer when writing a process and used by the operating system when scheduling and executing the process. Such exists allready both in academia (The Actor Foundry or Emerald are examples hereof) or in "real life" with MPI et.al.
But the "dream" of having an operating system which is just "undefined distributed" and which is able to execute "just any" process distributed is not realistic - for many reasons, including those above....Unfortunately it is also a common "wish" to see caught out of the blue...
Nonsense, thinking that we are somehow able to improve upon the Divine plan of God is hubris of the highest order. God's plan has given us the wonderful variety of life that we see today, not some "scientist" more interested than having his name on a paper than the ethical and moral implications of their work.
I know I am entering the really deep water here - peoples belifs are to be taken seriously - but I beg to offer a slightly different opinion on this. Not a flame - just a slightly different opinion...
First, one could argue that genetic engineering might be part of this "God's" plan in the first place. After all, "God" being a (the) supreme being, then everything must be in accordance with this beings schedule, no? Including the scientists work on genetic engineering?
Secondly, I am much more afraid of what people on this planet might go about doing with such a technology, than I am of what "God" might do. As other posters have pointed out, there are plenty of madmen out there, who would make super-{soldiers|workers|scientists|whatever} (no need to mention a trivial thing such as "super-sports-stars", which has been tried for years through doping etc). Ok, in accordance with my first point, actions of such madmen may just be the "punishment of God" for tampering with the genes. However I do have a hard time believing that a supreme being would include in his plan " 1) make mankind do something clever, 2) punish mankind for 1)".
Thirdly, I believe that there is more to it than that scientists are only aiming for "getting their name on a paper". Being in science myself, I know that publication is a major goal for any scientist (the only measure you are evaluated against is your publication rate, usually). I also agree, that during the process of researching, very little concirn is usually given to the ethical implications of the research. To me, personally, and probably to a lot of others, this is because...well, I am not personally qualified to evaluate such. Blinded by the "coolness" of some discovery and all the wonderfull things this discovery will do, I doubt that a scientist is much capable of taking two steps backwards and saying "hey, this may be bad, I better not publish". After all, scientists are only humans (maybe we should investigate genetically engineering better and more ethical scientists to prevent ideas such as "genetic engineering" from emerging?).
Fourthly, I believe that for some scientist to decide against publishing a discovery of some sort or should decide against researching some area based on "ethics" is just as harmfull - and unethical. Preventing the world from learning secrets of life might also be preventing the world from becomming a better place to live.
That is, not saying that all new discoveries are good. They are not. But they should not be dismissed solely on the basis of being "new" and potentially applicable for "unethical" purposes. Everything can be applied in both a good and a bad way...