Greetings and Salutations....
Ah, reading this thread takes me back....
That sticking problem was so common with the Seagates that I used to tell folks that they were shipped with a small, rubber hammer to whap the front of the drive, to get them to spin up. I DID have a small rubber hammer I used for the purpose...Looked kind of like the sort that a doctor uses to test one's reflexes. Worked great about 90+% of the time.
regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
that was a stupid thing to do, indeed, but, it is an apples and oranges comparison with the batteries used in laptops. Those button batteries have NO protections against being shorted out, and, even a "dead" one has enough power left to provide an interesting moment - as you discovered. In the years I have been dealing with laptop batteries, I have yet to see one that does not have the contacts recessed into the body, such that the only way to short them out would be for a u-shaped piece of metal to be pushed in and held in there for a bit.
regards
dave mundt
No, insurance companies would like to assign people to like risk pools, and charge accordingly. Anything which allows them to put me in a different pool than some idiot who takes lots of risks is fine by me. Why should I have to subsidize others?
You seem to have a slight misunderstanding of the Insurance industry. It does NOT exist to help you, or to make sure that you have lower premiums. It is a "for profit" industry, therefore exists to suck as much cash out of our pockets as is possible and put it into the investors and workers in the industry.
Any time they have to pay out on a claim, it is an expense that cuts profits, and, therefore, they will do all they can to either deny that claim, or, either cancel the policy ASAP, or, move the claimant to a much more expensive pool. They make their money back, and then some.
I realize this is the darkest face of the insurance industry that I am presenting here, and, it is not universally true. However, more and more, this is the model that the industry is moving towards, in that unending struggle to make more money this quarter than they did last quarter.
pleasant dreams
dave mundt
What's the big deal? I can think of better places to get porn.
Greetings and Salutations...
Well, there are a couple of issues here that may have escaped your notice. Firstly, in all the discussions up to this point, EVERY governmental and company representative that discussed the capabilities of the scanners stated that the images were NOT stored in any long term or accessible fashion. They would be snapped, and, displayed on a screen for a person to look at, then, be destroyed.
This was a deliberate lie, as these documents prove.
Secondly, the government is being secretive about how this image transmission to long-term storage is activated. As a long-time analyst and programmer, I suspect that all that it takes is for some one to log into the machine as an administrator, and click a check-box. it has been my experience that "test modes" like this are built to be very easy to access, as the folks that do the testing hate to work any harder than required.
Thirdly, while it may not matter to YOU that your privacy is being invaded with no great benefits or increase in security, it DOES matter to me and many others like me. More and more reports are coming out that indicate that these machines are more theater than an effective tool.
Fourthly, as Pres. Obama noted in his address to the Nation a few nights ago, the only reason that the "Christmas Boob"...sorry...Bomber...was able to get onto the plane with his toys was because of a massive failure to analyze intelligence by the various Federal agencies...including Homeland Security, which was supposed to do EXACTLY that sort of analysis. I appreciated his fairly tough statements, but, frankly, I would have preferred that he be slightly less merciful and go ahead and fire some of the bureaucrats whose incompetence and malfeasance put Americans in jeopardy. That would have been a much clearer message that we have plenty of tools to find and halt terrorist plots now...and that the only thing that will truly deal with the problem is better intelligence gathering, analysis, and, examinations of why it is that so much of the world is pissed enough with America's policies that even well educated members of society are willing to blow them selves up to attempt to strike at us.
Finally, have you noticed that much of the world press is referring to this as a "hysterical" reaction, and that not ony will it not do anything significant to increase America's safety, but, will likely have the effect of causing fewer and fewer world citizens to visit the country for business purposes, or vacations?
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations...
this concept of privacy is addressed in another posting to/....and I will read it later. In any case, I am right with you, in that I value my privacy and do not like having ANYONE staring over my shoulder all the time. I am older than dirt, so I recall that the only class of people that were under 24/7 observation were high-security prisoners, and, frankly, I have no desire to join (or be dragged into) that class.
Greetings and Salutations...
Yea...the message on my cell phone says "I am busy solving someone ELSE's problem right now...leave info and I will solve YOURs as soon as I can". Folks tend to forget that I carry the cellphone for MY convenience, not the world's. Since nobody is going to die if i do not answer for a bit, I see no particular urgency in dropping the task I am doing to answer a call.
Now...I find that the person who I am focusing my attention on loves this. Everyone else hates it. As a wise person said one time "make one person happy, make another person mad...".
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
Your title is, I have to say, one of the best lines ever produced by the Star Trek franchise.
However, alas, the answer to your question is a bit harder to find. It is like the situation with my work as a system/network administrator. If I am lucky, and, do my job WELL, then, everything runs smoothly and there are no problems. If I fail to patch, or ignore flaky hardware...there is a problem that impacts the functioning of the equipment. So...How many problems did my work stop? One? a thousand? None? There is no real way to answer that.
One data point that I find telling, though, is that I have yet to hear any hard statistics about actual, credible terrorist actions that have been stopped by Homeland Security in the years since 9/11. There have been some vague things that have been SAID, with lots of handwaving, etc, that attacks have been foiled, but, it sounds like the same sort of nonsense that anyone trying to justify their actions would use.
Bruce Schneier, in his blog: http://www.schneier.com/blog/ Makes some very good points about the security theater in America, and, how the focus could be changed to really increase security for travellers. However, there is no money to be made from HIS suggestions, so, the erosion of civil rights and privacy will continue, until America takes its place along with the Roman Empire and other failed civilizations in history.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
Perhaps the better questions are "why ARE some websites blocked? and WHO makes that decision?" I administer web access for a client or two, and, the decision to block given websites comes from upper level management, usually NOT the IT command structure. In a business, there is an almost paranoid fear that the employees are sitting around surfing the Net instead of doing work to make money for the company. Any blocking seems focused at keeping that from happening.
Alternatively, I go and sit at Panera Bread (a great place for good pastries, and excellent, light lunch sandwiches and such by the by...) on occasion, and have found a few websites that would not come up because they were blocked. However, it appeared that this was because the company providing the blocking had mis-catagorized them, and, once I sent a note in about the site, they ended up being unblocked. But then, If I were going to surf porn sites I would NOT be doing it in a public place like that....
So, I suppose there are cases where IT admins abuse their powers and block sites that should be available...but I have not run into them. Amazingly enough BOFHs are human too, and, some of them ARE little Herberts....control freaks and generally annoying people. The rest of us are all genial and fun folks with a slightly twisted sense of humor.
Regards
Dave Mundt
Ok...some idiot tried this with a Saudi (I think) prince a bit ago. All that happened was that the room got covered with splats of terrorist and the prince was a bit shocked (and probably grossed out a bit). The problem is that the human body has a fair amount of mass that is hard to blow apart, and tends to diffuse the effects of the explosive. Unless there IS some technology that would turn all the fluid in the body into nitroglycerin that is stabile enough to keep from going off until the desired moment, the idea of a "human bomb" remains the pipe dream of Science Fiction.
Greetings and Salutations.
It is one thing to pass a 3000 page bill that Congress understands. However, too often today, they get a 1000 page bill a day or two before they have to vote on it. I find it difficult to believe that your average Congress-person can read and understand a 1000 page bill in two days and make a rational decision on whether passing it is good for the country as a whole, and, not just a few special interest groups.
Actually, I suspect that far too many of the bills that run through Congress these days are WRITTEN by special interest groups, and, simply emailed to their favorite Congress-person's office for injection into the pipeline.
Pleasant dreams.
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
Yea...that 2% is not all that much, however, as an example, my local taxes (state and county) add up to 9.75%. So...how happy would YOU be if all of a sudden your order was 12% more expensive? I think that would cut down on the number of purchases made by a chunk...and hurt the economy.
regards
dave mundt
Hum...you do realize that a "kaboom" requires and atmosphere? and the fact there was no huge plume visible might have been an indication that the composition of the ground was not what they expected.
Real science is not like "CSI". it is not fast paced, and the excitement of a breakthrough in knowledge is usually restrained.
I think the NASA coverage of the missions is quite qood...I do like to see the reality of it and not have some breathless announcer trying to jazz it up. regards dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations...
This is good point, that is often overlooked. As Martin Luther taught, Christians should be "in the world" but not "of the world". While Christians should render under Caeser what is Caeser's, they should be careful to meditate on where their motivations come from, and, desire to ascertain if they come from the dark desires of the Earthly Pleasures, or, a desire for spiritual growth and enlightenment.
Of course, this really applies to almost any religion...not just Christianity...so it would probably be a good idea for followers of ANY religious belief system to study their holy books, and, engage in open discussion with other believers, in order to help foster that spiritual growth.
Like THAT is going to happen!
Merry Christmas
Dave (yes, I am a Lutheran) Mundt
greetings and salutations... My only real problems with twitter are these: a) I am not sure I can say anything of substance in 140 characters... b) Twitter promotes the idea that anyone else cares about what you are doing every 30 seconds of the day....Trust me...WE DO NOT CARE.
Merry Christmas
Dave Mundt
Sounds really good, and, in general, I like Opera (and use it almost exclusively). However, I HOPE they will have finally cleaned up the memory issues that gradually suck up every byte of available RAM over time.
Oh yea...there is also the problem that, even when masking as FireFox, I cannot get http://www.skyandtelescope.com/ to work properly. It will not allow me to log in, and, has problems with the interactive star chart...So...Firefox it is. And I will not EVEN talk about trying to use Godaddy.com....
But, again...I really like Opera and am hanging onto it!
My father was a Microbiologist, and, spent most of his professional life researching yeasts and molds. His method was to gather as much data as possible, and see what results stemmed from it. I believe he would be shocked and dismayed to see this widespread tendency to come up with a conclusion, then, find the data that supports it.
Those so-called scientists who are doing this, either to push a personal agenda or to ensure the continuation of grant money should be ashamed of themselves, and, should either clean up their act, or get drummed out of the scientific community!
This sort of activity not only wastes huge amounts of resources, but, what is worse, undercuts the credibility of the scientific community, making it far harder for the good scientists who are following good protocols and producing good results to be believed.
I observed elsewhere that it appears that the entire world is falling into a pit of hair-trigger, paranoid madness. This example, sadly, supports that belief. I hope I am wrong, but, I fear I am not...
Greetings and Salutations....
Always good to provide citations to back up one's statements. Sad that this one seems to undercut your point of view: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sexuality.htm
Greetings and salutations...
I do not care to get into the holy war between the refractor and reflector camps (*smile*). I would certainly agree that a refractor with top quality glass can provide breathtaking performance. On the down side, they tend to get really expensive really quickly, which tends to make them bad for amateurs just getting their first scope. One can get a good Dobsonian light bucket for not too much money at all, and, have enough light coming in to support some fairly high powers and still get good views. On the down side, you do lose some of that snappy contrast, and, perhaps, some ease of use, thanks to the increased size and alt-azimuth mount.
Which gets us back to the fact that it would be quite helpful to have a few more details about this telescope...is it one of those $60 walmart refractors, or is it a $1800.00 SkyQuest XX14i, or somewhere in between?
Greetings and Salutations.... Well, it depends on how big a telescope you have. Aperture is everything, alas. However, even the cheapest scope will show good images of the moon and some level of detail of the planets.
Also, you should be able to see how double stars that appear to be a single point of light when we look at them with the naked eye actually consist of several stars in close proximity.
bigger scopes can show the nebulae and other, dimmer items.
Go check out http://www.skyandtelescope.com/ for many observing suggestions, etc.
Greetings and Salutations...
Hum...back in the day, when I migrated a customer from one package to another one, I had this tendency to bring up the new software, and run in parallel for a week or so. I seem to have missed the memo about simply shutting off the old service then, at some time in the future bringing up the "new, Improved" version.
But then, I have spent 30 years trying to actually HELP businesses make money....
regards
dave mundt
Actually, I had an amusing moment in the early 90s as regards this. I got a jury duty notice addressed to my father. Well, I called the court clerk and had a short conversation that went something like this:
Me: "Hello....I got this notice and I am calling to let you know that he will not be able to serve".
Clerk (in kind of a snotty tone): "I'm sorry sir, but everyone that is called is required to serve, or appear to explain why they cannot".
Me: "That may be a little difficult because he has been dead for six years now..."
lllloooonnnnngggg silence.
Clerk: "Ok...." and hangs up.
Apparently they got their records updated because I got no more summons. I must admit that I had this momentary desire to jerk them around a bit, and tell them that if they wanted to talk to him, they would have to come and get him....and then give his current address as the cemetary where he was buried.
Greetings and Salutations.
This is the last of a number of massive infrastructure failures in the past few months. The issues with Gmail, T-Mobile, SwissDisk, etc and this should be a warning that the computing infrastructure is becoming baroquely fragile. Fragility and unreliability in the basic tools necessary to keep a business running are hard to deal with in good economic times. With the current, VERY stressed situation, it could easily cause marginal businesses to go toes up, throwing many more people out of work, and having a ripple effect that pushes hundreds of other support businesses closer to the edge.
I would suggest that, instead of the creeping featuritis that has been so popular with software for the past decade that the focus should change towards making the foundations more secure, and, less likely to fail. Among other things, this WOULD require stopping this insane focus on having software "phone home" all the time, and, fail if it is unable to contact the appropriate servers. Another big step would be to focus back on quality of software rather than flashy features. There really should be no reason today for a piece of software to be exploited by a simple buffer overflow. The principles of excellent programming have been known and studied for 50 or more years now, and, should be fairly well understood. You MIGHT have heard of this fellow by the name of Knuth...he has said a thoughtful thing or two on the subject, and, it might well be worth reading some of his writings.
More later
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations....
Apparently there is a slight misunderstanding of exactly HOW "multitasking" works. Unless the rational brain is actually a number of fairly separate processing systems that we actually CAN control separately it is, essentially one computer, with a series of semi-independent subsystems. This means that the ONLY way to multitask is by time-slicing...As was mentioned before, our brain has a series of tasks it needs to prioritize and work on. It splits each second up into an arbitrary (and perhaps changing) number of chunks, and, allocates some chunk of those small slices of time to each task. So...one's attentions are continually focusing on ONE thing.
As for safe driving, I am in total agreement with the pilot's rule posted before of "Aviate, navigate, communicate". I will take on the acceptable risk of talking on the cellphone while driving, but, pay less attention to the conversation than I do what is going on outside the vehicle. When people talk with me, they know that they are likely to get periods of inattention while I turn my entire focus on surviving the flood of OTHER idiots on the road!
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and salutations...
Here is an interesting study that indicates that the chances of a false positive are fairly great, especially in a chaotic setting: http://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB396/DB396.pdf
One might wave this off as inconsequential, until one gets a security escort in the mall because their face happens to resemble that of a pedophile or thief.
Automating enforcement is a tricky thing, and, should be approached with great caution. We should not hop on the train simply because it is new, and shiny, and a sales person has taken us out for a multiple martini lunch!
Of course, this is a USA-centric view, where at least we have the historical documents that are SUPPOSED to protect the citizens against abuse of one's civil rights by the authorities... You folks out in the rest of the world...well....learn from the fact that over the past eight years or so, that, in spite of the Constitution, America has taken many large and troubling steps towards a Kafa-esque police state.
Pleasant dreams.
Dave Mundt
Comcast was yelled at for throttling access to "heavy users," but slashdot linked an article where it proved that heavy users do not actually impact performance on the network for everyone else. (Hence, the throttling was a bogus move.) My question is does this extend to cell networks?
It sounds like De La Vega is saying it's going to improve service when they educate smartphone users, and the users curb their heavy usage. Does heavy usage of a smartphone impact service for other phone users? Or is this another bunch of bunk?
Well, it might from AT&T's point of view. Did you know that their aircard Internet Access starts at $35/month, but, the bandwidth allocated is 200 MEGABYTES? They have a pretty pre-historic view of broadband usage, alas, as that barely allows a person to surf a few websites per day and check Email. Since the question came up, I checked OUR broadband usage, and, it averages 20 Gigabytes/month, and has peaked as high as 26 Gig. Also, although I do not have the rates in front of me right now, as I recall, they start charging at a rate of $1.00/Megabyte of traffic after that basic allocation...
Our usage volume comes mainly from the fact that some folks DO like to actually watch video online, or listen to audio streams from the BBC, etc. (and, I have been known to download the ISO for the latest Linux version every so often too.
Anyone else have traffic usage stats to share?
Regards
Dave Mundt
Slashdot Mirror
Greetings and Salutations....
Ah, reading this thread takes me back....
That sticking problem was so common with the Seagates that I used to tell folks that they were shipped with a small, rubber hammer to whap the front of the drive, to get them to spin up. I DID have a small rubber hammer I used for the purpose...Looked kind of like the sort that a doctor uses to test one's reflexes. Worked great about 90+% of the time.
regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
that was a stupid thing to do, indeed, but, it is an apples and oranges comparison with the batteries used in laptops. Those button batteries have NO protections against being shorted out, and, even a "dead" one has enough power left to provide an interesting moment - as you discovered. In the years I have been dealing with laptop batteries, I have yet to see one that does not have the contacts recessed into the body, such that the only way to short them out would be for a u-shaped piece of metal to be pushed in and held in there for a bit.
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations....
No, insurance companies would like to assign people to like risk pools, and charge accordingly. Anything which allows them to put me in a different pool than some idiot who takes lots of risks is fine by me. Why should I have to subsidize others?
You seem to have a slight misunderstanding of the Insurance industry. It does NOT exist to help you, or to make sure that you have lower premiums. It is a "for profit" industry, therefore exists to suck as much cash out of our pockets as is possible and put it into the investors and workers in the industry.
Any time they have to pay out on a claim, it is an expense that cuts profits, and, therefore, they will do all they can to either deny that claim, or, either cancel the policy ASAP, or, move the claimant to a much more expensive pool. They make their money back, and then some.
I realize this is the darkest face of the insurance industry that I am presenting here, and, it is not universally true. However, more and more, this is the model that the industry is moving towards, in that unending struggle to make more money this quarter than they did last quarter.
pleasant dreams
dave mundt
What's the big deal? I can think of better places to get porn.
Greetings and Salutations...
Well, there are a couple of issues here that may have escaped your notice. Firstly, in all the discussions up to this point, EVERY governmental and company representative that discussed the capabilities of the scanners stated that the images were NOT stored in any long term or accessible fashion. They would be snapped, and, displayed on a screen for a person to look at, then, be destroyed.
This was a deliberate lie, as these documents prove.
Secondly, the government is being secretive about how this image transmission to long-term storage is activated. As a long-time analyst and programmer, I suspect that all that it takes is for some one to log into the machine as an administrator, and click a check-box. it has been my experience that "test modes" like this are built to be very easy to access, as the folks that do the testing hate to work any harder than required.
Thirdly, while it may not matter to YOU that your privacy is being invaded with no great benefits or increase in security, it DOES matter to me and many others like me. More and more reports are coming out that indicate that these machines are more theater than an effective tool.
Fourthly, as Pres. Obama noted in his address to the Nation a few nights ago, the only reason that the "Christmas Boob"...sorry...Bomber...was able to get onto the plane with his toys was because of a massive failure to analyze intelligence by the various Federal agencies...including Homeland Security, which was supposed to do EXACTLY that sort of analysis. I appreciated his fairly tough statements, but, frankly, I would have preferred that he be slightly less merciful and go ahead and fire some of the bureaucrats whose incompetence and malfeasance put Americans in jeopardy. That would have been a much clearer message that we have plenty of tools to find and halt terrorist plots now...and that the only thing that will truly deal with the problem is better intelligence gathering, analysis, and, examinations of why it is that so much of the world is pissed enough with America's policies that even well educated members of society are willing to blow them selves up to attempt to strike at us.
Finally, have you noticed that much of the world press is referring to this as a "hysterical" reaction, and that not ony will it not do anything significant to increase America's safety, but, will likely have the effect of causing fewer and fewer world citizens to visit the country for business purposes, or vacations?
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations... /....and I will read it later. In any case, I am right with you, in that I value my privacy and do not like having ANYONE staring over my shoulder all the time. I am older than dirt, so I recall that the only class of people that were under 24/7 observation were high-security prisoners, and, frankly, I have no desire to join (or be dragged into) that class.
this concept of privacy is addressed in another posting to
Greetings and Salutations...
Yea...the message on my cell phone says "I am busy solving someone ELSE's problem right now...leave info and I will solve YOURs as soon as I can". Folks tend to forget that I carry the cellphone for MY convenience, not the world's. Since nobody is going to die if i do not answer for a bit, I see no particular urgency in dropping the task I am doing to answer a call.
Now...I find that the person who I am focusing my attention on loves this. Everyone else hates it. As a wise person said one time "make one person happy, make another person mad...".
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
Your title is, I have to say, one of the best lines ever produced by the Star Trek franchise.
However, alas, the answer to your question is a bit harder to find. It is like the situation with my work as a system/network administrator. If I am lucky, and, do my job WELL, then, everything runs smoothly and there are no problems. If I fail to patch, or ignore flaky hardware...there is a problem that impacts the functioning of the equipment. So...How many problems did my work stop? One? a thousand? None? There is no real way to answer that.
One data point that I find telling, though, is that I have yet to hear any hard statistics about actual, credible terrorist actions that have been stopped by Homeland Security in the years since 9/11. There have been some vague things that have been SAID, with lots of handwaving, etc, that attacks have been foiled, but, it sounds like the same sort of nonsense that anyone trying to justify their actions would use.
Bruce Schneier, in his blog: http://www.schneier.com/blog/ Makes some very good points about the security theater in America, and, how the focus could be changed to really increase security for travellers. However, there is no money to be made from HIS suggestions, so, the erosion of civil rights and privacy will continue, until America takes its place along with the Roman Empire and other failed civilizations in history.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
Perhaps the better questions are "why ARE some websites blocked? and WHO makes that decision?" I administer web access for a client or two, and, the decision to block given websites comes from upper level management, usually NOT the IT command structure. In a business, there is an almost paranoid fear that the employees are sitting around surfing the Net instead of doing work to make money for the company. Any blocking seems focused at keeping that from happening.
Alternatively, I go and sit at Panera Bread (a great place for good pastries, and excellent, light lunch sandwiches and such by the by...) on occasion, and have found a few websites that would not come up because they were blocked. However, it appeared that this was because the company providing the blocking had mis-catagorized them, and, once I sent a note in about the site, they ended up being unblocked. But then, If I were going to surf porn sites I would NOT be doing it in a public place like that....
So, I suppose there are cases where IT admins abuse their powers and block sites that should be available...but I have not run into them. Amazingly enough BOFHs are human too, and, some of them ARE little Herberts....control freaks and generally annoying people. The rest of us are all genial and fun folks with a slightly twisted sense of humor.
Regards
Dave Mundt
Ok...some idiot tried this with a Saudi (I think) prince a bit ago. All that happened was that the room got covered with splats of terrorist and the prince was a bit shocked (and probably grossed out a bit). The problem is that the human body has a fair amount of mass that is hard to blow apart, and tends to diffuse the effects of the explosive. Unless there IS some technology that would turn all the fluid in the body into nitroglycerin that is stabile enough to keep from going off until the desired moment, the idea of a "human bomb" remains the pipe dream of Science Fiction.
Greetings and Salutations.
It is one thing to pass a 3000 page bill that Congress understands. However, too often today, they get a 1000 page bill a day or two before they have to vote on it. I find it difficult to believe that your average Congress-person can read and understand a 1000 page bill in two days and make a rational decision on whether passing it is good for the country as a whole, and, not just a few special interest groups.
Actually, I suspect that far too many of the bills that run through Congress these days are WRITTEN by special interest groups, and, simply emailed to their favorite Congress-person's office for injection into the pipeline.
Pleasant dreams.
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
Yea...that 2% is not all that much, however, as an example, my local taxes (state and county) add up to 9.75%. So...how happy would YOU be if all of a sudden your order was 12% more expensive? I think that would cut down on the number of purchases made by a chunk...and hurt the economy.
regards
dave mundt
Hum...you do realize that a "kaboom" requires and atmosphere?
and the fact there was no huge plume visible might have been an indication that
the composition of the ground was not what they expected.
Real science is not like "CSI". it is not fast paced, and the excitement of a breakthrough
in knowledge is usually restrained.
I think the NASA coverage of the missions is quite qood...I do like to see the reality
of it and not have some breathless announcer trying to jazz it up.
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations...
This is good point, that is often overlooked. As Martin Luther taught, Christians should be "in the world" but not "of the world". While Christians should render under Caeser what is Caeser's, they should be careful to meditate on where their motivations come from, and, desire to ascertain if they come from the dark desires of the Earthly Pleasures, or, a desire for spiritual growth and enlightenment.
Of course, this really applies to almost any religion...not just Christianity...so it would probably be a good idea for followers of ANY religious belief system to study their holy books, and, engage in open discussion with other believers, in order to help foster that spiritual growth.
Like THAT is going to happen!
Merry Christmas
Dave (yes, I am a Lutheran) Mundt
greetings and salutations...
My only real problems with twitter are these:
a) I am not sure I can say anything of substance in 140 characters...
b) Twitter promotes the idea that anyone else cares about what you are doing every 30 seconds of the day....Trust me...WE DO NOT CARE.
Merry Christmas
Dave Mundt
Sounds really good, and, in general, I like Opera (and use it almost exclusively). However, I HOPE they will have finally cleaned up the memory issues that gradually suck up every byte of available RAM over time.
Oh yea...there is also the problem that, even when masking as FireFox, I cannot get http://www.skyandtelescope.com/ to work properly. It will not allow me to log in, and, has problems with the interactive star chart...So...Firefox it is. And I will not EVEN talk about trying to use Godaddy.com....
But, again...I really like Opera and am hanging onto it!
Greetings and Salutations.
My father was a Microbiologist, and, spent most of his professional life researching yeasts and molds. His method was to gather as much data as possible, and see what results stemmed from it. I believe he would be shocked and dismayed to see this widespread tendency to come up with a conclusion, then, find the data that supports it.
Those so-called scientists who are doing this, either to push a personal agenda or to ensure the continuation of grant money should be ashamed of themselves, and, should either clean up their act, or get drummed out of the scientific community!
This sort of activity not only wastes huge amounts of resources, but, what is worse, undercuts the credibility of the scientific community, making it far harder for the good scientists who are following good protocols and producing good results to be believed.
I observed elsewhere that it appears that the entire world is falling into a pit of hair-trigger, paranoid madness. This example, sadly, supports that belief. I hope I am wrong, but, I fear I am not...
Pleasant Dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations....
Always good to provide citations to back up one's statements. Sad that this one seems to undercut your point of view:
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sexuality.htm
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and salutations...
I do not care to get into the holy war between the refractor and reflector camps (*smile*). I would certainly agree that a refractor with top quality glass can provide breathtaking performance. On the down side, they tend to get really expensive really quickly, which tends to make them bad for amateurs just getting their first scope. One can get a good Dobsonian light bucket for not too much money at all, and, have enough light coming in to support some fairly high powers and still get good views. On the down side, you do lose some of that snappy contrast, and, perhaps, some ease of use, thanks to the increased size and alt-azimuth mount.
Which gets us back to the fact that it would be quite helpful to have a few more details about this telescope...is it one of those $60 walmart refractors, or is it a $1800.00 SkyQuest XX14i, or somewhere in between?
Greetings and Salutations....
Well, it depends on how big a telescope you have. Aperture is everything, alas.
However, even the cheapest scope will show good images of the moon and some level of detail of the planets.
Also, you should be able to see how double stars that appear to be a single point of light when we look at them with the naked eye actually consist of several stars in close proximity.
bigger scopes can show the nebulae and other, dimmer items.
Go check out http://www.skyandtelescope.com/ for many observing suggestions, etc.
Greetings and Salutations...
Hum...back in the day, when I migrated a customer from one package to another one, I had this tendency to bring up the new software, and run in parallel for a week or so. I seem to have missed the memo about simply shutting off the old service then, at some time in the future bringing up the "new, Improved" version.
But then, I have spent 30 years trying to actually HELP businesses make money....
regards
dave mundt
P.S. Hey! You kids! Get off my #$%^&*( Lawn!
Actually, I had an amusing moment in the early 90s as regards this. I got a jury duty notice addressed to my father. Well, I called the court clerk and had a short conversation that went something like this:
Me: "Hello....I got this notice and I am calling to let you know that he will not be able to serve".
Clerk (in kind of a snotty tone): "I'm sorry sir, but everyone that is called is required to serve, or appear to explain why they cannot".
Me: "That may be a little difficult because he has been dead for six years now..."
lllloooonnnnngggg silence.
Clerk: "Ok...." and hangs up.
Apparently they got their records updated because I got no more summons. I must admit that I had this momentary desire to jerk them around a bit, and tell them that if they wanted to talk to him, they would have to come and get him....and then give his current address as the cemetary where he was buried.
Got to love the bureaucracy.
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
This is the last of a number of massive infrastructure failures in the past few months. The issues with Gmail, T-Mobile, SwissDisk, etc and this should be a warning that the computing infrastructure is becoming baroquely fragile. Fragility and unreliability in the basic tools necessary to keep a business running are hard to deal with in good economic times. With the current, VERY stressed situation, it could easily cause marginal businesses to go toes up, throwing many more people out of work, and having a ripple effect that pushes hundreds of other support businesses closer to the edge.
I would suggest that, instead of the creeping featuritis that has been so popular with software for the past decade that the focus should change towards making the foundations more secure, and, less likely to fail. Among other things, this WOULD require stopping this insane focus on having software "phone home" all the time, and, fail if it is unable to contact the appropriate servers. Another big step would be to focus back on quality of software rather than flashy features. There really should be no reason today for a piece of software to be exploited by a simple buffer overflow. The principles of excellent programming have been known and studied for 50 or more years now, and, should be fairly well understood. You MIGHT have heard of this fellow by the name of Knuth...he has said a thoughtful thing or two on the subject, and, it might well be worth reading some of his writings.
More later
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations....
Apparently there is a slight misunderstanding of exactly HOW "multitasking" works. Unless the rational brain is actually a number of fairly separate processing systems that we actually CAN control separately it is, essentially one computer, with a series of semi-independent subsystems. This means that the ONLY way to multitask is by time-slicing...As was mentioned before, our brain has a series of tasks it needs to prioritize and work on. It splits each second up into an arbitrary (and perhaps changing) number of chunks, and, allocates some chunk of those small slices of time to each task. So...one's attentions are continually focusing on ONE thing.
As for safe driving, I am in total agreement with the pilot's rule posted before of "Aviate, navigate, communicate". I will take on the acceptable risk of talking on the cellphone while driving, but, pay less attention to the conversation than I do what is going on outside the vehicle. When people talk with me, they know that they are likely to get periods of inattention while I turn my entire focus on surviving the flood of OTHER idiots on the road!
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and salutations...
Here is an interesting study that indicates that the chances of a false positive are fairly great, especially in a chaotic setting:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB396/DB396.pdf
One might wave this off as inconsequential, until one gets a security escort in the mall because their face happens to resemble that of a pedophile or thief.
Automating enforcement is a tricky thing, and, should be approached with great caution. We should not hop on the train simply because it is new, and shiny, and a sales person has taken us out for a multiple martini lunch!
Of course, this is a USA-centric view, where at least we have the historical documents that are SUPPOSED to protect the citizens against abuse of one's civil rights by the authorities... You folks out in the rest of the world...well....learn from the fact that over the past eight years or so, that, in spite of the Constitution, America has taken many large and troubling steps towards a Kafa-esque police state.
Pleasant dreams.
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations...
Comcast was yelled at for throttling access to "heavy users," but slashdot linked an article where it proved that heavy users do not actually impact performance on the network for everyone else. (Hence, the throttling was a bogus move.) My question is does this extend to cell networks?
It sounds like De La Vega is saying it's going to improve service when they educate smartphone users, and the users curb their heavy usage. Does heavy usage of a smartphone impact service for other phone users? Or is this another bunch of bunk?
Well, it might from AT&T's point of view. Did you know that their aircard Internet Access starts at $35/month, but, the bandwidth allocated is 200 MEGABYTES? They have a pretty pre-historic view of broadband usage, alas, as that barely allows a person to surf a few websites per day and check Email. Since the question came up, I checked OUR broadband usage, and, it averages 20 Gigabytes/month, and has peaked as high as 26 Gig. Also, although I do not have the rates in front of me right now, as I recall, they start charging at a rate of $1.00/Megabyte of traffic after that basic allocation...
Our usage volume comes mainly from the fact that some folks DO like to actually watch video online, or listen to audio streams from the BBC, etc. (and, I have been known to download the ISO for the latest Linux version every so often too.
Anyone else have traffic usage stats to share?
Regards
Dave Mundt