In vim, I often enter :set paste then highlight text from a browser and paste that text (middle mouse button) into my vim session. The "set paste" prevents the lines from indenting further and further to the right.
After pasting, many lines are too long. In particular, a whole page gets pasted as one line. So, I enter :1,$!fmt or like the author (shift-v or ctrl-v) then
I know an old Fortran programmer, who recently had me set him up with his old standard
gold-font on black I remember several years in the 1980's when the computers I used were either
green-font on black or
gold-font on black
I'm not sure why the old text monitors almost always had a black background. For things like desks, I've read that
white is recommended, perhaps so your eyes can more easily wander. I usually use the default black-font on white, partly for clarity. For a long time, I preferred black-font on wheat background, but after a few years I found I could better see black-font on white for very small fonts, otherwise I like the subdued wheat color background. With most backgrounds, I believe a black font will give better resolution for small fonts.
Here's my "xterm" black-font on wheat background, with a gumby pointer (I find this pointer obscures characters less when you click words), and many other options I use,
Until a year ago, the workstations everyone of my agency's employees used came from Dell. Before Dell (in the early 1990's), we had problems with companies like Micron and Compaq. Now, for a couple years, we have had problems with Dell; eg, my computer is on its fourth motherboard in as many years, and I know if I leave my computer on 24 hours a day that its motherboard will burnout. Dell has replaced every one of our agencies motherboards on our Dell computers, but they keep burning out. For our 1000 personnel, over the last year, we no longer buy Dell, but buy HP workstations.
As I recall, 60% of all the world's solar energy is being generated in Germany. So, rather than look around the U.S., one should see how Germany harnesses solar energy. Two technologies have made solar technologies much less expensive. 1. Solar concentrators.
When sunlight hits a solar energy device,
that device needn't convert immediately to electricity or heat.
Split the use of solar energy into two steps,
a. Concentrate/divert the solar light with what looks like a mirror
or microwave antenna, but several meters in diameter.
b. Focus the solar mirror onto your solar energy converter;
essentially our solar cells of today, but able to withstand
large amounts of solar energy.
Producing solar mirrors is far less expensive than producing solar panels.
This concentrator method is being claimed by some Israelis.
They claim that 3 such concentrators save enough energy costs
to construct a new concentrator in 3 years,
thereby bootstrapping the economics of constructing solar concentrators.
2. Thin solar panels.
Thin is cheaper than thick.
Germans have developed this technology.
Germany is one of the last places you'd expect to have half the world's solar power. From the same solar setup, you can get about twice as much energy near the equator (eg, Israel) than in high latitude Germany. Indeed, if we covered the Sahara Desert with solar panels, we would produce as much energy as used by the whole world.
People on this blog mention that solar energy isn't storable. But everything on earth is the result of solar energy -- previous stars exploded to produce uranium and all the other elements besides hydrogen, oil and coal are sunlight stored in carbon chains. Which storage method used by nature could we use ourselves? We could heat water then store it underground, we could create carbon chains like oils, we could move Sysiphus proverbial rock (or water) uphill then retrieve it downhill. Dams once provided much of America's energy, and now solar energy could move lake or sea water up into dams for later use. If we go to mostly battery driven cars, 100 million big car batteries can store a great deal of solar energy. Solar energy can be stored; but perhaps the greatest technological challenge is not the acquisition of solar energy, rather the storage of this energy.
Old paper voting systems, one might say, were perfected for their use. Use them. But underneath them, have an electronic sensor system that detects the votes.
This eliminates the problem of stuffing paper ballots as in Chicago's past and Kenya's yesterday; and eliminates the problem of electronic machines giving whatever numbers the last programmer wanted, not what the voters selected.
That's a double check. No voting system should be allowed that is less trustworthy than the old paper system. If we allow voting to be compromised, we no longer have democracies -- we have the government some programmer wants (programmocracy), or some thug with burlap bags of ballots wants (thugocracy).
For the $1 trillion spent on the Iraq boondoggle, the U.S. could have installed 900,000 30 story windmills, enough to provide all U.S. electricity needs (although some more needed for equivalent energy needs of vehicles).
Each 30 story windmill costs about $1 million. Building these windmills, the U.S. could reinvigorate its manufacturing and invention. Indeed, the U.S. might even catch up with the Chinese who can now reduce those 900,000 windmills to 1000 vertical cylinder Maglev turbines, suspending each windmill over 60 acres with super magnets, http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/26/maglev-wind-turbines-1000x-more-effiencient-than-normal-windmill/ The Chinese windmills will cost $50 million each, so U.S. electricity needs could by met by 1000 of these windmills for less that $1 trillion.
The economist notices numerous externalities to the use of oil and coal -- the most serious externality currently being oil's inducement to wars. Incidentally, the first working windmill was in Persia (Iran) in the early 600's AD. It seems foolish to waste $1 trillion in Iraq -- in what country should the U.S. invest its tax dollars? The same $1 trillion would solve U.S. electricity needs and potentially all its energy needs (when converted to other forms), promote research, and found an industry based in U.S. Doesn't the U.S. consider Manhattan-like projects and Landing-on-the-moon projects anymore? The U.S. should have a Manhattan-like project for various energy sources. Why isn't the U.S. spending $100 billion per year on energy research?
A Hong Kong Director for Citibank once asked me why Americans don't value their money as much as people in countries like China value their money. Hong Kong recently reduced its maximum income tax to 17 percent, and continues to have no sales tax. A country should spend its money wisely, otherwise it should not be in the business of spending money, whether on wars or on research.
Many people get agitated at words like "alternative energy". What source of energy will the world use in 300 years? Will people then talk about "alternative energy"? No, their only choice for energy 300 years from now will be energy we now call "alternative energy". Shouldn't we at least consider future technologies, technologies that we will eventually have to use anyway?
Radio controlled clocks are sometimes called atomic clocks because their underlying time resides in a Colorado atomic clock. These clocks give accuracy within a second as does the ntpd daemon on Unix computers. The world seems in balance when you set 3 radio controlled clocks in front of your computer, then watch all four with the same hour, the same minute, count the same seconds. You shouldn't tell your clock the time -- your clock should tell you the time, which radio controlled clocks and computers running ntp do tell.
Frustrated by clocks throughout my home with different times, advanced by my wife to advance me, one clock advanced by 3 hours; I got 7 radio controlled clocks which she cannot set because they set themselves. Additionally, they give the day of week (Wednesday) and the date (December 11).
I first saw a radio controlled clock in 1992 while in Germany -- a $200 clock made by Jungans. Several internet companies which mainly sell weather equipment also sell radio controlled clocks. I purchased 7 of these made by Lacrosse, which can have a big LCD and can cost as little as $10 (US).
Bottom line: does your agency use Landsat? A Washington Statistical Society presentation last year went into great detail why one agency, after using Landsat for 20 years, had belatedly ceased using Landsat.
You didn't mention which agency you worked for that is dominated by science/engineering managers. What is the CURRENT background of the "Secretary" [top person] of that department? Lawyer? NASA, NSF, or a standards agency? You mention your employer had operations in Virginia, so I would initially guess you worked for USGS. These largely sub-agencies probably retain a technical base. But Department of Transportation, USDA, Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce?
I went to a meeting at Department of Commerce a few years ago. Richard Stallman also came down from New York. A former U.S. Congressman was in charge of this meeting. About 10 people were dressed in black -- from MPAA, RIAA,..., although Jack Valenti had his western outfit. The former Congressman, then head, and probably a lawyer, said "we're going to do something" for you. At that meeting, they decided a broadcast flag was most viable. Before that meeting, the Department of Commerce said it welcomed comment, but if comment was late, the public could attend the meeting to present comment. Since their message was after the date allowed for comment, and the former Congressman prevented public comment, Richard Stallman, after over an hour listening to this restraint on speech, howled at the prevention of any public comment from the technically competent.
At USDA over a decade ago, the choice of GIS software was decided on a golf course between a top official of USDA and a company representative of ArcView. It was decided that ArcView would be used in USDA and USDA would cease using GRASS (developed by a federal agency).
These were more subversions of technical competence. The decisions were not based on the science of economics, not on computer science evaluations, not on electrical/geologic engineering evaluations. Rather than being based on years of technical experience, these decisions were based on ephemeral friendliness by the innumerate government heads with those who were numerate about their own profits.
Even U.S. federal government agencies are ceasing use of Landsat, after using it for years. For example, in USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), Landsat images have become essentially unuseable. The Landsat satellite remaining has been producing alternate good data and striped data. The data has been very slow (less frequently produced) compared to some Indian data.
The Indian satellite data has been far cheaper until now and more frequent, but must be ordered. So, eg, data on U.S. geographic sites on specific dates does not exist unless ordered. This is understandable when you realize how much disk space would be consumed and that Indian satellites make much more fequent passes than Landsat
For almost half a century, the U.S. had a lead in space, almost solely from its efforts in the 1960's. On numerous fronts, this is no longer true. Indeed, it can no longer be true.
The United States stocks its legislature with lawyers, not engineers. The President stocks its agencies heads largely with lawyers, not engineers. For example, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration was first headed in the 1890's by an engineer, and similarly reputable people until about 1976. That agency puts a picture of its heads and primary qualification on a wall. For a few decades now, that agency's heads have been outrages to technology. One head's picture puts his qualification as "football player". Then there are the many heads that are lawyers. Indeed, in the super agency, U.S. Department of Transportation, a few years ago lawyers came to line management positions, lawyers who thought so much of themselves that they actually demoted (including less salary) numerous engineers. After a few years, this egregious act was reversed, but that act merely reflects a great deal of what has become the U.S. Federal Government. For example, a sample of Federal Agencies' libraries reveals that its libraries (USGS, USDOT, USDA,...) have received virtually no new books. Its as if the need for books in Federal Government ceased around 1980. At USDOT, one researcher sought a book that detailed regulations that it set for vehicles. That book was in a library, a locked room with no open hours. The telephone number on that library's door led to no-one with a key. Finally, someone was found with a key to the library, but the book, produced by USDOT no longer existed, and the only hope of a copy now lie in the hands of a contractor.
The U.S. government once provided some good service. Its vast expenditures guaranteed that, amongst its enormous expenditures, something good would get produced. My impression is that the last quarter century has greatly reduced that amount of good coming out the the U.S. Federal Government.
How can a government spending several trillion dollars a year, spend but about $25 billion on space technologies, and then manage to hobble even that?
How can a nation that had engineering marvels, now produce but about 50,000 engineers a year. This is about the same number produced by the little country of South Korea. Japan, with less than half the U.S. population, produces twice as many engineers. India produces somewhere between 100,000 and 400,000 (according to one Indian entrepreneur) engineers. China produces several times more engineers than the U.S. A country does not advance using air-in-its-head; it advances using something more tangible.
The U.S. is massive (in area, population, and resources), but has put itself on a diet. It's shedding engineers, scientists, and technology like Landsat.
In Toastmasters 10 years ago, we had a flurry of short speeches using PowerPoint. One fellow, working for the Pentagon, said the military had tired of PowerPoint presentations, where individuals took great effort to produce graphics and sound, at the opportunity cost of content. The presentations became more like juveniles showing off their songs and latest toys.
Large sections of the military then banned much of PowerPoint, particularly sound and glittering graphics.
I myself continue making presentations with the most difficult but most thought-out of tools, LaTeX, which is actually a mathematical book publishing tool.
I bought a Model M in 2004 and another Model M this week fro $60, http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/cus101usenon.h tml IBM keyboard manufacturing went from IBM to Lexmark to Unicomp, which now manufactures these. These keyboards even say "Model M" on the back, although pckeyboards.com doesn't mention "Model M". Select the "Buckling spring" option and the "PS2 Mini-din" option. Approaching their main website becomes difficult to identify this keyboard amongst other similar keyboards, http://www.pckeyboard.com/customizer.html from which I chose the "Customizer 101" in http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/keyboards.html They also have "Buckling spring" versions with 104 keys and USB connections.
I originally bought this keyboard because, as a Linux user, I have no need for the Microsoft buttons, which become like graffiti on the keyboard. I like this particular Model M's lack of Microsoft icons, its heft, and of course its buckling springs.
I read that all our energy needs would be met by 900,000 windmills, each the size of the Statue of Liberty. Such devices would be a boon to what has been a nation declining in engineers (no more than Japan or even Korea), so long as we didn't import most everything involved.
The boon to using electricity is that the underlying energy generator isn't fixed to oil or hydroelectric.
Linux Format, July 2005, from the local magazine rack, rated "Sweep" as the best sound editor. Sweep development was funded by Pixar Studios, although I believe sweep does very little development now. While sweep seemed good for quick results, I prefer "Rezound" over sweep, ardour, and audacity. I use a sound editor to edit speeches and music from Ethical Society meetings, previously recorded on cassette tape. Both sweep and rezound have multiple undo/redo edits.
Rezound, like most sound editors has LADSPA and JACK. One thing I'd like in rezound is a wave pattern while rezound records -- I only get the wave pattern after I stop recording (I suppose this prevents excess demand on the processor). When I tire of using menus or the mouse, shortcuts like
ctrl-z implement the infinite undo. While a couple techniques weren't obvious, I found rezound more transparent than audacity.
I use mp3gain to adjust the gain/volume to a standard, rather than using tools in rezound.
I use a somewhat professional M-Audio Delta 66 audio card, which has 4 input and 4 output 1/4" plugs in a break out box, although I had to compile "envy24control" on Debian Linux to control this sound card.
I occasionally try other tools, because I use an audio editing tool over 100 hours a year. Yet I keep returning to rezound.
In an hour long interview 2 weeks ago at National Press Club here in Washington DC, Dan Rather responded several times concerning bloggers as journalists. Dan said you are not a journalist if you blog anonymously. You are not a journalist if you ignore discordant views, seeking only to grind in favor of your own predetermined conclusions.
Then Dan said he is old (70), and blogging is new, so he couldn't say much besides who wouldn't be a journalist. He mentioned that when he started journalism 50 years ago, everyone called himself a reporter, except a few with canes (very old reporters).
A bare 3 1/2" drive is far smaller than any of my encased USB 3 1/2" drives. I would like to slip a SATA 3 1/2" bare drive into an open (no top or sides, just a bottom and front, often essentially just a bar with a USB cable) USB "case". For example, "forensic" open cases, which are designed for those extracting data from drives gone bad, so the user needs to quickly insert and remove disk drives. While the forensic "cases" I have seen are open, and some handle SATA, and many will disable writing (always) to the drive, I want all these aspects. I want an open case (no fan, no sides) that takes SATA drives, and allows me to switch writing either on or off.
A full external case with 3 1/2" drive is too bulky for any brief case I have had. But I can easily put a 3 1/2" drive into a Seagate plastic container or OEM foam container, then insert it into my briefcase or lunchbox.
The ability to switch write on/off is particularly useful for security. You could install your operating system on such an external USB drive, switch off write (probably reboot somewhere in the timeline), preventing anyone from changing your hard drive data!
Some countries and some registrars within those countries treat the domain-name purchaser more respectfully. These registrars/countries are less likely to give domain-name ownership to another (usually a far wealthier usurper bringing a legal/criminal argument).
There was a wonderful site, http://www.domainnamebuyersguide.com/m001/w ebpages/registrarranking/registrarrankings01.htm now usurped by a registrar (don't go to this site now) that ranked registrars by several categories, including legal, cost, ease-of-use. I chose my registrar based largely on their legal ratings, but also on their cost ratings. Of course, networksolutions.com based in US (which gave isonews.com to the US government) has notoriety for taking your domainname away from you. Networksolutions.com has two legal counts against it: itself and its oversupplied-with-lawyers US base. If the US doesn't turn around, its old-womanlike-chastisements and increasing copyright sanctioned monopolies/oligopolies (Microsoft, telephone, movie, music) will end its successes. A non-registrar example of non-US companies offering a FAR cheaper and less frustrating product within the US is in the cell phone business, where the Mexican TracFone offers US cell phone service for $50 per year with no requests for money for a FULL year, unless the customer needs to purchase more non-expiring minutes.
From my notes on that wonderful, now gone domainbuyersguide site, the best sites for avoiding legal usurpations were
http://www.gandi.net #France, $12 US
http://www.InternetNamesWW.com #Australia, $30 I have since wondered about good legal arrangements with the newer and also inexpensive
http://joker.com #Germany, $15
I use the Perl script, http://www.byyt.com/find-documents find-documents which returns a phrase's context,
1. hierarchical filesystem location, including sub-directory and filename
2. outline-context within that filename, including repeated character lines like
###ANALYSIS##################
and standard grammar school outline entries like
B. Second Point
3) third entry
i) first entry with search phrase somewhere
This find-documents script highlights the first instance of a relevant file in green, and outlines found phrases in red. Every outline-context line is also displayed; for example, "find-documents acroread" replies,
./Linux/commands.readme: ~~~PDF Files:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ./Linux/commands.readme: 13. To read Adobe (Acrobat) PDF files, ./Linux/commands.readme: acroread #from Adobe itself postscript.readme: 3. pdf postscript.readme: a. acroread 4.05 seems to work well. postscript.readme: e. xv succeeded, postscript.readme: However, acroread seems better.
Here, the search word "acroread" always gets highlighted red; on their first instances, the search filenames "commands.readme" and "postscript.readme" get highlighted green; and the file-contents after each filename and ":" get left-aligned more neatly. If I have no outline organisation in my files, this find-documents still works, though the only returned context becomes the file structure.
This find-documents script ignores backup files like *.old2, *.10-12-2002,...
This script acts rather like "grep", but returns more lines (outline-context) from a file and highlights words. I chose this approach as a way to keep and access my notes, yet allowing other Linux tools to search my notes. I have used this script for 4 years. It searches my ascii notes well, but probably wouldn't work well for indexing mp3 and Microsoft Word files.
If you use this find-documents script, the option "--help" gives options, and the script's first 150 lines document itself. For example, "-r" recursively searches files in subdirectories. Jameson C. Burt, jameson@coost.com .
I have worked at using PostgreSQL for 3 years, but I have not used it yet because I have not seen that anonymous users can use it. I sense that its strong security prevents expected use. If I say anyone can read my tables but no one can write to them, I would hope "anyone" would include even those without accounts. The only way I found to do this in Debian changed root permission to update postgres and the many Debian packages using postgres.
For three years, I continue to be optimistic about PostgreSQL, and every 8 months I look at it again, thinking I missed how both root can automatically update Postgres, yet users can anonymously use PostgreSQL when "allowed".
Amazon's competition BarnesandNoble.com has not accomodated their customers nearly as well. 1. time-to-live is 0 for many of Barnes and
Nobles' interactions.
That is, when you hit most of BarnesandNoble's
webpages, your DNS server is not supposed to
go to its cache, but go to BarnesandNoble's
DNS servers. As a result, almost
all BarnesandNoble webpages fail for me
since I use internet's 13 root name servers;
eg, A.root-servers.net
Using BarnesandNoble is impossible for me
unless I use DNS servers besides those that
are the foundations of internet.
Here are some time-to-live (ttl) for their sites,
barnesandnoble.com >0
www.barnseandnoble.com =0
store.barnesandnoble.com =0
shop.barnesandnoble.com =0
2. BarnesandNoble offers no used books.
The 1991 no-longer-printing book,
Passionate Attachment
by an President Johnson's advisor who
perpetually recommended ceasing involvement
in Vietnam,
George Ball
was essentially a book prevented from success
by political maneuvers.
While I couldn't buy this book at all at
BarnesandNoble, the listing at Amazon.com
included a used book listing on the main entry.
This contribution to the reading community by
Amazon helps greatly.
For this, Amazon has been attacked by the
publishing industry, yet Amazon knows its
primary customers are those who pay for books.
3. BarnesandNoble has no obvious listings of
suggested books in specialty areas.
But Amazon's listing for "Greene Econometrics"
has a few, mostly PhD students, listings of
"Great Books in Economics".
4. BarnesandNoble has no user reviews.
They have only the optimistic reviews of the
publisher.
Indeed, this seems a recurring theme of BarnesandNoble to keep their publishers in mind before their primary customers. Amazon has kept its lead by helping its customers make appropriate choices, without biasing the customer towards someone else's wishes. Amazon then succeeds when its competition hinders its customers in numerous ways.
With Verizon as my telco, I have seen their
habits twice: once with Northpoint which
went bankrupt and once with Covad 3 months ago.
For EVERY appointment arranged with Verizon,
Verizon would fail to show on the first appointment. In addition, Northpoint made
two trouble reports before my DSL would work
--- my first installation with Northpoint
took 10 months (August, 1998, to May, 1999),
of which several months can be attributed to
Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic).
When I got DSL service with Speakeasy.com 3 months
ago with underlying provider Covad,
I read that of all the telcos Covad worked
with, Verizon caused Covad the most trouble/delays. Part of the problems Covad said
they had with Verizon was just what the complaint
here is against Covad
(the pot calls the kettle black).
As I recall, Verizon would list
(I gather for regulator's reading) every failure
by Verizon itself as a no-show (eg, with Covad,
Verizon failed to show on April 3, 2001).
Here is a quote from Speakeasy when I scheduled
installation,
" We apologize to the undue inconvenience to our East Coast customers, but Bell Atlantic [Verizon]
and Bell South's tactics of calling all missed loop installs no access issues is forcing us to
make this a neccesary step until Covad corrects
this matter with them."
When I asked about Verizon's missed date,
which cost me $250 by taking off work to be home,
Speakeasy's employee Heather wrote,
as if this was Verizon's routine to miss
appointments then after the fact reschedule,
"Verizon rescheduled your
installation to April 5."
Microsoft is an accomplice (aiding and abetting)
on
The Melissa Syndrome
·
· Score: 1
Unix/Linux have no viruses, though traveling internet under "root" privileges can break security. Seeking user-friendliness, Microsoft has produced software that will act on anybody's program/message. This is not secure. Since Microsoft additionally piggy-backed internet, it became even more vulnerable to "viruses". Using Microsoft's Word and OS on internet amounts to standing naked in Central Park, then complaining you were molested.
When you run around naked in Central Park, you expect to be molested. You should complain little about the molester (Melissa author), but should complain about people without clothes (Microsoft's insecure software). Children run around naked. When children become adults (adult operating systems), they dress like adults (perhaps Linux or BSD Unix).
Slashdot Mirror
In vim, I often enter
:set paste
then highlight text from a browser
and paste that text (middle mouse button)
into my vim session.
The "set paste" prevents the lines from indenting further and further to the right.
After pasting, many lines are too long.
:1,$!fmt
In particular, a whole page gets pasted as one line.
So, I enter
or like the author (shift-v or ctrl-v) then
!fmt
I know an old Fortran programmer,
who recently had me set him up with his old standard
gold-font on black
I remember several years in the 1980's when the computers I used were either
green-font on black
or
gold-font on black
I'm not sure why the old text monitors almost always had a black background.
For things like desks, I've read that
white
is recommended,
perhaps so your eyes can more easily wander.
I usually use the default black-font on white,
partly for clarity.
For a long time, I preferred black-font on wheat background, but after a few years I found I could better see black-font on white for very small fonts, otherwise I like the subdued wheat color background.
With most backgrounds, I believe a black font
will give better resolution for small fonts.
Here's my "xterm" black-font on wheat background,
with a gumby pointer (I find this pointer obscures characters less when you click words), and many other options I use,
xterm -sb -sl 1000 -j -si -sk -mc 500 -cn -bg wheat -fg black -cr red -ms cyan -geom 100x40 -fn $font -cc 33:48,37:48,45-47:48,64:48,92:48,126:48,58:48 -xrm xterm.vt100.pointerColor:blue -xrm xterm.vt100.pointerColorBackground:yellow -xrm xterm.vt100.pointerShape:gumby
Some company has surely done research on this
-- I wonder what colors they prefer.
Until a year ago, the workstations everyone of my agency's employees used
came from Dell.
Before Dell (in the early 1990's), we had problems with companies like Micron and Compaq.
Now, for a couple years, we have had problems with Dell; eg,
my computer is on its fourth motherboard in as many years,
and I know if I leave my computer on 24 hours a day
that its motherboard will burnout.
Dell has replaced every one of our agencies motherboards on our Dell computers,
but they keep burning out.
For our 1000 personnel, over the last year,
we no longer buy Dell, but buy HP workstations.
As I recall, 60% of all the world's solar energy is being generated in Germany.
So, rather than look around the U.S., one should see how Germany harnesses solar energy.
Two technologies have made solar technologies much less expensive.
1. Solar concentrators.
When sunlight hits a solar energy device,
that device needn't convert immediately to electricity or heat.
Split the use of solar energy into two steps,
a. Concentrate/divert the solar light with what looks like a mirror
or microwave antenna, but several meters in diameter.
b. Focus the solar mirror onto your solar energy converter;
essentially our solar cells of today, but able to withstand
large amounts of solar energy.
Producing solar mirrors is far less expensive than producing solar panels.
This concentrator method is being claimed by some Israelis.
They claim that 3 such concentrators save enough energy costs
to construct a new concentrator in 3 years,
thereby bootstrapping the economics of constructing solar concentrators.
2. Thin solar panels.
Thin is cheaper than thick.
Germans have developed this technology.
Germany is one of the last places you'd expect to have half the world's solar power.
From the same solar setup, you can get about twice as much energy near the equator
(eg, Israel) than in high latitude Germany.
Indeed, if we covered the Sahara Desert with solar panels,
we would produce as much energy as used by the whole world.
People on this blog mention that solar energy isn't storable.
But everything on earth is the result of solar energy
-- previous stars exploded to produce uranium and all the other elements besides hydrogen,
oil and coal are sunlight stored in carbon chains.
Which storage method used by nature could we use ourselves?
We could heat water then store it underground,
we could create carbon chains like oils,
we could move Sysiphus proverbial rock (or water) uphill then retrieve it downhill.
Dams once provided much of America's energy,
and now solar energy could move lake or sea water up into dams for later use.
If we go to mostly battery driven cars,
100 million big car batteries can store a great deal of solar energy.
Solar energy can be stored;
but perhaps the greatest technological challenge is not the acquisition of solar energy,
rather the storage of this energy.
Old paper voting systems, one might say, were perfected for their use.
Use them.
But underneath them, have an electronic sensor system that detects the votes.
This eliminates the problem of stuffing paper ballots as in Chicago's past and Kenya's yesterday;
and eliminates the problem of electronic machines giving whatever numbers the last programmer wanted,
not what the voters selected.
That's a double check.
No voting system should be allowed that is less trustworthy than the old paper system.
If we allow voting to be compromised, we no longer have democracies --
we have the government some programmer wants (programmocracy),
or some thug with burlap bags of ballots wants (thugocracy).
For the $1 trillion spent on the Iraq boondoggle,
the U.S. could have installed 900,000 30 story windmills,
enough to provide all U.S. electricity needs
(although some more needed for equivalent energy needs of vehicles).
Each 30 story windmill costs about $1 million.
Building these windmills, the U.S. could reinvigorate its manufacturing and invention.
Indeed, the U.S. might even catch up with the Chinese who can now
reduce those 900,000 windmills to 1000 vertical cylinder Maglev turbines,
suspending each windmill over 60 acres with super magnets,
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/26/maglev-wind-turbines-1000x-more-effiencient-than-normal-windmill/
The Chinese windmills will cost $50 million each,
so U.S. electricity needs could by met by 1000 of these
windmills for less that $1 trillion.
The economist notices numerous externalities to the use of oil and coal
-- the most serious externality currently being oil's inducement to wars.
Incidentally, the first working windmill was in Persia (Iran) in the early 600's AD.
It seems foolish to waste $1 trillion in Iraq -- in what country should the U.S. invest its tax dollars?
The same $1 trillion would solve U.S.
electricity needs and potentially all its energy needs (when converted to other forms),
promote research, and found an industry based in U.S.
Doesn't the U.S. consider Manhattan-like projects and Landing-on-the-moon projects anymore?
The U.S. should have a Manhattan-like project for various energy sources.
Why isn't the U.S. spending $100 billion per year on energy research?
A Hong Kong Director for Citibank once asked me why Americans don't value their money
as much as people in countries like China value their money.
Hong Kong recently reduced its maximum income tax to 17 percent,
and continues to have no sales tax.
A country should spend its money wisely,
otherwise it should not be in the business of spending money,
whether on wars or on research.
Many people get agitated at words like "alternative energy".
What source of energy will the world use in 300 years?
Will people then talk about "alternative energy"?
No, their only choice for energy 300 years from now will be
energy we now call "alternative energy".
Shouldn't we at least consider future technologies,
technologies that we will eventually have to use anyway?
Radio controlled clocks are sometimes called atomic clocks because their underlying time resides in a Colorado atomic clock.
These clocks give accuracy within a second as does the ntpd daemon on Unix computers.
The world seems in balance when you set 3 radio controlled clocks in front of your computer,
then watch all four with the same hour, the same minute, count the same seconds.
You shouldn't tell your clock the time -- your clock should tell you the time,
which radio controlled clocks and computers running ntp do tell.
Frustrated by clocks throughout my home with different times,
advanced by my wife to advance me, one clock advanced by 3 hours;
I got 7 radio controlled clocks which she cannot set because they set themselves.
Additionally, they give the day of week (Wednesday) and the date (December 11).
I first saw a radio controlled clock in 1992 while in Germany -- a $200 clock made by Jungans.
Several internet companies which mainly sell weather equipment also sell radio controlled clocks.
I purchased 7 of these made by Lacrosse, which can have a big LCD and can cost as little as $10 (US).
Bottom line: does your agency use Landsat?
...,
A Washington Statistical Society presentation last year went into great detail why
one agency, after using Landsat for 20 years, had belatedly ceased using Landsat.
You didn't mention which agency you worked for that is dominated by science/engineering managers.
What is the CURRENT background of the "Secretary" [top person] of that department? Lawyer?
NASA, NSF, or a standards agency?
You mention your employer had operations in Virginia,
so I would initially guess you worked for USGS.
These largely sub-agencies probably retain a technical base.
But Department of Transportation, USDA, Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce?
I went to a meeting at Department of Commerce a few years ago.
Richard Stallman also came down from New York.
A former U.S. Congressman was in charge of this meeting.
About 10 people were dressed in black -- from MPAA, RIAA,
although Jack Valenti had his western outfit.
The former Congressman, then head, and probably a lawyer,
said "we're going to do something" for you.
At that meeting, they decided a broadcast flag was most viable.
Before that meeting, the Department of Commerce said it welcomed comment,
but if comment was late, the public could attend the meeting to present comment.
Since their message was after the date allowed for comment,
and the former Congressman prevented public comment,
Richard Stallman, after over an hour listening to this restraint on speech,
howled at the prevention of any public comment from the technically competent.
At USDA over a decade ago, the choice of GIS software was decided on a golf course
between a top official of USDA and a company representative of ArcView.
It was decided that ArcView would be used in USDA and USDA would cease using GRASS
(developed by a federal agency).
These were more subversions of technical competence.
The decisions were not based on the science of economics,
not on computer science evaluations,
not on electrical/geologic engineering evaluations.
Rather than being based on years of technical experience,
these decisions were based on ephemeral friendliness by the innumerate government heads
with those who were numerate about their own profits.
Even U.S. federal government agencies are ceasing use of Landsat,
...) have received virtually no new books.
after using it for years.
For example, in USDA (United States Department of Agriculture),
Landsat images have become essentially unuseable.
The Landsat satellite remaining has been producing alternate good data and striped data.
The data has been very slow (less frequently produced) compared to some Indian data.
The Indian satellite data has been far cheaper until now and more frequent, but must be ordered.
So, eg, data on U.S. geographic sites on specific dates does not exist unless ordered.
This is understandable when you realize how much disk space would be consumed
and that Indian satellites make much more fequent passes than Landsat
For almost half a century, the U.S. had a lead in space,
almost solely from its efforts in the 1960's.
On numerous fronts, this is no longer true.
Indeed, it can no longer be true.
The United States stocks its legislature with lawyers, not engineers.
The President stocks its agencies heads largely with lawyers, not engineers.
For example, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration was first headed in the 1890's by
an engineer, and similarly reputable people until about 1976.
That agency puts a picture of its heads and primary qualification on a wall.
For a few decades now, that agency's heads have been outrages to technology.
One head's picture puts his qualification as "football player".
Then there are the many heads that are lawyers.
Indeed, in the super agency, U.S. Department of Transportation,
a few years ago lawyers came to line management positions,
lawyers who thought so much of themselves that they actually demoted (including less salary)
numerous engineers.
After a few years, this egregious act was reversed,
but that act merely reflects a great deal of what has become the U.S. Federal Government.
For example, a sample of Federal Agencies' libraries reveals that
its libraries (USGS, USDOT, USDA,
Its as if the need for books in Federal Government ceased around 1980.
At USDOT, one researcher sought a book that detailed regulations that it set for vehicles.
That book was in a library, a locked room with no open hours.
The telephone number on that library's door led to no-one with a key.
Finally, someone was found with a key to the library,
but the book, produced by USDOT no longer existed,
and the only hope of a copy now lie in the hands of a contractor.
The U.S. government once provided some good service.
Its vast expenditures guaranteed that, amongst its enormous expenditures, something good
would get produced.
My impression is that the last quarter century has greatly reduced that amount of good
coming out the the U.S. Federal Government.
How can a government spending several trillion dollars a year,
spend but about $25 billion on space technologies,
and then manage to hobble even that?
How can a nation that had engineering marvels,
now produce but about 50,000 engineers a year.
This is about the same number produced by the little country of South Korea.
Japan, with less than half the U.S. population, produces twice as many engineers.
India produces somewhere between 100,000 and 400,000 (according to one Indian entrepreneur)
engineers. China produces several times more engineers than the U.S.
A country does not advance using air-in-its-head; it advances using something more tangible.
The U.S. is massive (in area, population, and resources), but has put itself on a diet.
It's shedding engineers, scientists, and technology like Landsat.
In Toastmasters 10 years ago, we had a flurry of short speeches using PowerPoint.
One fellow, working for the Pentagon, said the military had tired of PowerPoint presentations,
where individuals took great effort to produce graphics and sound,
at the opportunity cost of content.
The presentations became more like juveniles showing off their songs and
latest toys.
Large sections of the military then banned much of PowerPoint,
particularly sound and glittering graphics.
I myself continue making presentations with the most difficult
but most thought-out of tools, LaTeX,
which is actually a mathematical book publishing tool.
I bought a Model M in 2004 and another Model M this week fro $60,h tmll
1 32257&tid=137&tid=4
http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/cus101usenon.
IBM keyboard manufacturing went from IBM to Lexmark to Unicomp,
which now manufactures these.
These keyboards even say "Model M" on the back,
although pckeyboards.com doesn't mention "Model M".
Select the "Buckling spring" option and the "PS2 Mini-din" option.
Approaching their main website becomes difficult to identify this keyboard amongst other similar keyboards,
http://www.pckeyboard.com/customizer.html
from which I chose the "Customizer 101" in
http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/keyboards.htm
They also have "Buckling spring" versions with 104 keys and USB connections.
This was discussed on Slashdot a couple years ago,
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/09/2
and "find" "pckeyboard".
I originally bought this keyboard because, as a Linux user,
I have no need for the Microsoft buttons, which become like graffiti on the keyboard.
I like this particular Model M's lack of Microsoft icons,
its heft, and of course its buckling springs.
I read that all our energy needs would be met by 900,000 windmills,
each the size of the Statue of Liberty.
Such devices would be a boon to what has been a nation declining in
engineers (no more than Japan or even Korea),
so long as we didn't import most everything involved.
The boon to using electricity is that the underlying energy generator
isn't fixed to oil or hydroelectric.
Linux Format, July 2005, from the local magazine rack,
rated "Sweep" as the best sound editor.
Sweep development was funded by Pixar Studios,
although I believe sweep does very little development now.
While sweep seemed good for quick results,
I prefer "Rezound" over sweep, ardour, and audacity.
I use a sound editor to edit speeches and music from Ethical Society meetings,
previously recorded on cassette tape.
Both sweep and rezound have multiple undo/redo edits.
Rezound, like most sound editors has LADSPA and JACK.
One thing I'd like in rezound is a wave pattern while rezound records
-- I only get the wave pattern after I stop recording (I suppose this prevents
excess demand on the processor).
When I tire of using menus or the mouse, shortcuts like
ctrl-z
implement the infinite undo.
While a couple techniques weren't obvious, I found rezound more transparent than audacity.
I use mp3gain to adjust the gain/volume to a standard, rather than using tools in rezound.
I use a somewhat professional M-Audio Delta 66 audio card, which has 4 input and 4 output 1/4" plugs
in a break out box, although I had to compile "envy24control" on Debian Linux
to control this sound card.
I occasionally try other tools, because I use an audio editing tool over 100 hours a year.
Yet I keep returning to rezound.
In an hour long interview 2 weeks ago at National Press Club here
in Washington DC,
Dan Rather responded several times concerning bloggers as journalists.
Dan said you are not a journalist if you blog anonymously.
You are not a journalist if you ignore discordant views, seeking only to
grind in favor of your own predetermined conclusions.
Then Dan said he is old (70), and blogging is new,
so he couldn't say much besides who wouldn't be a journalist.
He mentioned that when he started journalism 50 years ago,
everyone called himself a reporter, except a few with canes (very old reporters).
A bare 3 1/2" drive is far smaller than any of my encased USB 3 1/2" drives.
I would like to slip a SATA 3 1/2" bare drive into an open (no top or sides,
just a bottom and front, often essentially just a bar with a USB cable) USB "case".
For example, "forensic" open cases, which are designed for those extracting data
from drives gone bad, so the user needs to quickly insert and remove disk drives.
While the forensic "cases" I have seen are open, and some handle SATA,
and many will disable writing (always) to the drive, I want all these aspects.
I want an open case (no fan, no sides) that takes SATA drives,
and allows me to switch writing either on or off.
A full external case with 3 1/2" drive is too bulky for any brief case I have had.
But I can easily put a 3 1/2" drive into a Seagate plastic container or OEM foam container,
then insert it into my briefcase or lunchbox.
The ability to switch write on/off is particularly useful for security.
You could install your operating system on such an external USB drive,
switch off write (probably reboot somewhere in the timeline),
preventing anyone from changing your hard drive data!
Some countries and some registrars within those countries treat the domain-name purchaser more respectfully. These registrars/countries are less likely to give domain-name ownership to another (usually a far wealthier usurper bringing a legal/criminal argument).
w ebpages /registrarranking/registrarrankings01.htm
There was a wonderful site,
http://www.domainnamebuyersguide.com/m001/
now usurped by a registrar (don't go to this site now) that ranked registrars by several categories, including legal, cost, ease-of-use.
I chose my registrar based largely on their legal ratings, but also on their cost ratings.
Of course, networksolutions.com based in US (which gave isonews.com to the US government) has notoriety for taking your domainname away from you. Networksolutions.com has two legal counts against it: itself and its oversupplied-with-lawyers US base.
If the US doesn't turn around, its old-womanlike-chastisements and increasing copyright sanctioned monopolies/oligopolies (Microsoft, telephone, movie, music) will end its successes. A non-registrar example of non-US companies offering a FAR cheaper and less frustrating product within the US is in the cell phone business, where the Mexican TracFone offers US cell phone service for $50 per year with no requests for money for a FULL year, unless the customer needs to purchase more non-expiring minutes.
From my notes on that wonderful, now gone domainbuyersguide site, the best sites for avoiding legal usurpations were
http://www.gandi.net #France, $12 US
http://www.InternetNamesWW.com #Australia, $30
I have since wondered about good legal arrangements with the newer and also inexpensive
http://joker.com #Germany, $15
I use the Perl script,
./Linux/commands.readme: ~~~PDF Files:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
./Linux/commands.readme: 13. To read Adobe (Acrobat) PDF files,
./Linux/commands.readme: acroread #from Adobe itself
...
.
http://www.byyt.com/find-documents
find-documents
which returns a phrase's context,
1. hierarchical filesystem location, including sub-directory and filename
2. outline-context within that filename, including repeated character lines like
###ANALYSIS##################
and standard grammar school outline entries like
B. Second Point
3) third entry
i) first entry with search phrase somewhere
This find-documents script highlights the first instance
of a relevant file in green, and outlines found phrases in red.
Every outline-context line is also displayed; for example,
"find-documents acroread" replies,
postscript.readme: 3. pdf
postscript.readme: a. acroread 4.05 seems to work well.
postscript.readme: e. xv succeeded,
postscript.readme: However, acroread seems better.
Here, the search word "acroread" always gets highlighted red;
on their first instances, the search filenames
"commands.readme" and "postscript.readme" get highlighted green;
and the file-contents after each filename and ":" get left-aligned more neatly.
If I have no outline organisation in my files,
this find-documents still works,
though the only returned context becomes the file structure.
This find-documents script ignores backup files
like *.old2, *.10-12-2002,
This script acts rather like "grep",
but returns more lines (outline-context) from a file and highlights words.
I chose this approach as a way to keep and access my notes,
yet allowing other Linux tools to search my notes.
I have used this script for 4 years.
It searches my ascii notes well, but probably wouldn't work well
for indexing mp3 and Microsoft Word files.
If you use this find-documents script,
the option "--help" gives options,
and the script's first 150 lines document itself.
For example, "-r" recursively searches files in subdirectories.
Jameson C. Burt, jameson@coost.com
I have worked at using PostgreSQL for 3 years,
but I have not used it yet because I have not
seen that anonymous users can use it.
I sense that its strong security prevents expected use. If I say anyone can read my tables but no one
can write to them, I would hope "anyone" would include even those without accounts.
The only way I found to do this in Debian
changed root permission to update postgres and the many Debian packages using postgres.
For three years, I continue to be optimistic about PostgreSQL, and every 8 months I look at it again, thinking I missed how both root can automatically update Postgres, yet users can anonymously use PostgreSQL when "allowed".
Amazon's competition BarnesandNoble.com has not
accomodated their customers nearly as well.
1. time-to-live is 0 for many of Barnes and
Nobles' interactions.
That is, when you hit most of BarnesandNoble's
webpages, your DNS server is not supposed to
go to its cache, but go to BarnesandNoble's
DNS servers. As a result, almost
all BarnesandNoble webpages fail for me
since I use internet's 13 root name servers;
eg, A.root-servers.net
Using BarnesandNoble is impossible for me
unless I use DNS servers besides those that
are the foundations of internet.
Here are some time-to-live (ttl) for their sites,
barnesandnoble.com >0
www.barnseandnoble.com =0
store.barnesandnoble.com =0
shop.barnesandnoble.com =0
2. BarnesandNoble offers no used books.
The 1991 no-longer-printing book,
Passionate Attachment
by an President Johnson's advisor who
perpetually recommended ceasing involvement
in Vietnam,
George Ball
was essentially a book prevented from success
by political maneuvers.
While I couldn't buy this book at all at
BarnesandNoble, the listing at Amazon.com
included a used book listing on the main entry.
This contribution to the reading community by
Amazon helps greatly.
For this, Amazon has been attacked by the
publishing industry, yet Amazon knows its
primary customers are those who pay for books.
3. BarnesandNoble has no obvious listings of
suggested books in specialty areas.
But Amazon's listing for "Greene Econometrics"
has a few, mostly PhD students, listings of
"Great Books in Economics".
4. BarnesandNoble has no user reviews.
They have only the optimistic reviews of the
publisher.
Indeed, this seems a recurring theme of
BarnesandNoble to keep their publishers
in mind before their primary customers.
Amazon has kept its lead by helping its customers
make appropriate choices, without biasing the
customer towards someone else's wishes.
Amazon then succeeds when its competition
hinders its customers in numerous ways.
---Jameson C. Burt
With Verizon as my telco, I have seen their
habits twice: once with Northpoint which
went bankrupt and once with Covad 3 months ago.
For EVERY appointment arranged with Verizon,
Verizon would fail to show on the first appointment. In addition, Northpoint made
two trouble reports before my DSL would work
--- my first installation with Northpoint
took 10 months (August, 1998, to May, 1999),
of which several months can be attributed to
Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic).
When I got DSL service with Speakeasy.com 3 months
ago with underlying provider Covad,
I read that of all the telcos Covad worked
with, Verizon caused Covad the most trouble/delays. Part of the problems Covad said
they had with Verizon was just what the complaint
here is against Covad
(the pot calls the kettle black).
As I recall, Verizon would list
(I gather for regulator's reading) every failure
by Verizon itself as a no-show (eg, with Covad,
Verizon failed to show on April 3, 2001).
Here is a quote from Speakeasy when I scheduled
installation,
" We apologize to the undue inconvenience to our East Coast customers, but Bell Atlantic [Verizon]
and Bell South's tactics of calling all missed loop installs no access issues is forcing us to
make this a neccesary step until Covad corrects
this matter with them."
When I asked about Verizon's missed date,
which cost me $250 by taking off work to be home,
Speakeasy's employee Heather wrote,
as if this was Verizon's routine to miss
appointments then after the fact reschedule,
"Verizon rescheduled your
installation to April 5."
Unix/Linux have no viruses, though traveling
internet under "root" privileges can break security.
Seeking user-friendliness, Microsoft has produced
software that will act on anybody's program/message. This is not secure. Since Microsoft additionally piggy-backed internet, it became even more vulnerable to "viruses". Using Microsoft's Word and OS on internet amounts to standing naked in Central Park, then complaining you were molested.
When you run around naked in Central Park, you expect to be molested. You should complain little about the molester (Melissa author), but should complain about people without clothes (Microsoft's insecure software). Children run around naked. When children become adults (adult operating systems), they dress like adults (perhaps Linux or BSD Unix).