Well. we had inertial navigation using gyroscopes for a long time now. At first it was mechanical gyroscopes, subsequently replaced with fiber loop optical gyros. Those gyros are quite a feat of precision---I think the best ones have the drift small enough so that you could navigate for extended periods. So why did we replace them with GPS? Well, they are much more expensive, larger and fragile compared to purely electronic GPS receivers.
BTW, I recently learned that the GPS system began as a clever hack by JHU APL engineers, who determined the orbit of the original Russian Sputnik satellite by listening to its Doppler shift (this technique was recently used to locate flight MH370 by measuring the Doppler shift of its telemetry signal). After doing that, they realized that this calculation can be reversed: geographic coordinates could be obtained by lmeasuring signals from a constellation of satellites in known orbits.
The original New Yorker article had a fascinating tidbit: when the architect realized the danger, he arranged to deploy a network of strain gauges to monitor the actual stresses in the building's critical structural nodes. This was done as an emergency, overnight IIRC. Several days later, the data stopped flowing. It turns out that the electrician's union found out that it was done without the union contract and had the wires cut.
Trello is an interesting cloud-based system: basically you create boards with pages that contain detailed items organized into lists and such. You can check off work as it progresses, and retire pages and boards that are done.
Polish pianist Kristian Zimerman had his Steinway grand piano seized by the TSA twice: the fist time around they destroyed it, the second time they just detained it for a week:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krystian_Zimerman
No, they didn't confuse it with a vegetable---apparently Zimerman recently modified his instrument and the piano smelled of glue. As a result he ended up travelling with just the mechanism, fitting it by hand to the boxes at concert halls he plays in.
You clearly have no idea how the current, very successful public funding of science works. The model that we had since WWII is based on public funding via competitive, peer-reviewed grants. This review function is crucial and indispensable in order to insulate research from political and even social pressure.
Again, the idea is that the public funding goes into a pool, and the researchers compete by submitting their proposals to an independent body of their peers who select most promising projects based on their expertise in the field.
The problem with the Nebraska situation is that apparently their legislature ignored the independent review phase and directly allocated money for a custom-made proposal that fits their preconceived notions.
Why do you think a publication charge is unjustified and does not add value? Clearly the peer-review and editing process are useful and necessary. We're just arguing over how to collect it: the old model is distributing the costs in a not very transparent way over the journal subscribers, whereas the new one charges the publishing author. I think the new system is more transparent and fairer.
You got this backwards--you are talking about the TeX output, which is of course fixed for a specific format, with specific fonts at specific resolution---and TeX is still better at that than most anything else, by properly handling kerning, rivulets, math layout, orphaning, header/footer layout, indices, etc..
A flexible TeX based system would re-run TeX when the layout changes. Can it be done quickly enough with modern technology? probably yes. Is it worth the trouble? I think the market has spoken and the perceived improvement was not enough to justify the trouble.
The article is confused about ARM chips, which are practically never socketed. It wouldn't make any sense because ARM CPUs are highly integrated---they tend to include on-chip equivalent of North Bridge, South Bridge and many peripherals such as video hardware, USB, Ethernet, I2C, serial and parallel I/O ports, timers, counters etc.
In fact, that's the main problem with Intel in the embedded and enthusiast market: it's hard to make a small/low cost platform like Raspberry Pi because you need an expensive CPU... _and_ the chipset and peripheral chips. The cost difference is staggering---there are ARM microcontrollers that cost less than a dollar (admittedly, not the ones that you can run Linux on, due to lack of virtual memory, and small flash/RAM).
The Reinheitsgebot isn't such a blessing you make it out to be. Of course it prevents commercial drek laced with oil refinery products, but it also excludes lambics and other flavored craft beers (Midas Touch, blackberry witbier, etc, etc). I really like the beer selection here in the US, with educated public rewarding small craft breweries who put out surprisingly good product.
If you ever saved a file under a name such as mypage.html.Jun12 or, worse, mypage.html.old, you basically used a ghetto Version Control. You already agree that it is useful, so let me show how easy it is to do it properly, in a way that will remember everything about who, when, and how changed every file, and will prevent accidental overwrites and editing conflicts.
It's not quite right that USADA relies entirely on rumors. Their spokesman claimed that they have blood test results that can only be explained by blood transfusions, which are classified as doping, are illegal and were denied by Armstrong. I am just repeating what I understood---please correct if you can.
So, for starters, people appear to confuse secure boot functionality in UEFI with secure BIOS upgrades. The former is required by new Windows 8 hardware profile and is provided as specified by the UEFI standard. The latter is what the NIST spec is talking about---to prevent firmware malware attacks.
The idea is simple---during normal operation BIOS is readonly; firmware updates write the new image to a temporary area, and upon reboot the old firmware takes over, realizes that there's a new firmware available, cheks the crypto signatures to ensure the provenance of the bew image and flashes it if they're OK. Unfortunately, there's no single implementation and AFAIK no common signing scheme---this stuff is proprietary and board-specific. NIST spec might make it saner, by requiring conforming implementations.
Does it prevent firmware exploits? Not quite, because there are option BIOSes that reside on PCI cards and such, and AFAIK they are not covered by the BIOS spec.
Is it better than a jumper solution proposed here? I believe so: I don't want to go back to the old days of having to crack open the box and boot DOS from floppies; they may work for a single machine or two but are not scalable for realistic largish deployments.
It is rather unlikely that you have a massive corruption of actual data in multiple files--for that, you'd need a sustained write activity hitting all over the disk. Possible, but not very probable. Instead, I think you have metadata corruption, so that the filesystem points to wrong blocks. The glimmer of hope here is that the actual file data is mostly contiguous, so that you can scan through the image and identify individual files even without the filesystem information.
There is a forensic tool called 'foremost' that does exactly that: rips through the binary filesystem image and as it finds headers of known data types (jpeg, gif, doc, mp3, etc. etc.), it tries to find as much following data as is consistent with known file layouts. The result of course has tons of cryptically named files of each type foremost knows about---not all of them are legitimate, even---but it's better than nothing.
Similar sentiments here---and a sad comparison with Steve Jobs who as far as I can tell didn't do much charitable giving, and apparently was quite good at finding tax loopholes so he didn't pay much in taxes either.
Some of my Scout parent friends are military doctors and they told me that better field latrines were a measurable factor in WWII. All armies had established procedures for setting them up, and the fastidius Germans did a solid job of it, if you pardon the pun---but the Americans added an additional step of covering the latrine box with a burlap sack as a fly barrier. The flies are a major disease vector, and as a result American troops were healthier and more combat ready.
It's great that the RSAremote hack helped, but there's more work to do. For instance, SELinux developer Dan Walsh is struggling with RSA's PAM module for SecurID:
http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/48571.html/
RSA recommends turning off enforcing mode, instead of fixing whatever the underlying problem is--not exactly the excellence you might expect from a prominent computer security outfit.
Read the blog---Walsh suspects there's more shenanigans lurking in their code.
In 2006 there was an earthquake in Basel, Switzerland, caused by geothermal engineering. They drilled a 5km deep bore and injected water under pressure, which is very similar to what's done for fracking. Strangely enough, Switzerland has tectonic zones---Basel was wiped out by a major earthquake in 1356:
It's curious how we never hear about rogue traders caught _earning_ 2B$. The hedge traders are supposed to run balanced trades that do not have large downside risks, but consequently aren't supposed to earn fantastic profits---so a trader who suddenly earns a lot of money was likely to have violated his guidelines, and the risk management people in theory should police it just as vigorously. In practice, I can't remember anyone being fired for extra earnings, so I suspect that those controls are purposedly kept vague and/or easy to circumvent.
If this can save so much money why isn't the health care industry already doing it? Are they really that stupid or are all the promises of big savings not likely to pan out?
It's a perfect example of the network effect. The savings can only
materialize if everybody agrees on the same standard, getting past the
usual 'what we are currently doing must be the standard' bickering.
Standardization efforts are hard because they combine technology,
business and cultural issues. A successful standard has to find a
balance between negative feedback of skepticism and low expectations
resulting in unsatisfactory outcomes, and hyper-enthusiasm that can
bring over-specified unworkable monsters.
Historically, the best outcomes occurred in a relatively uncrowded
fields where early players made a wise strategic commitment to
interoperability (c.f. the "rough concensus and working code" mantra of
Internet standards).
The government might be a good neutral referee if it plays its hand well.
By the way, a working DRM would actually be a desirable feature of the electronic health record system---only you and your delegates should control the access to the records. It will be hard for the government to propose such access restrictions, because of the public distrust towards the digital art content control and government secrecy.
Slashdot Mirror
BTW, I recently learned that the GPS system began as a clever hack by JHU APL engineers, who determined the orbit of the original Russian Sputnik satellite by listening to its Doppler shift (this technique was recently used to locate flight MH370 by measuring the Doppler shift of its telemetry signal). After doing that, they realized that this calculation can be reversed: geographic coordinates could be obtained by lmeasuring signals from a constellation of satellites in known orbits.
The original New Yorker article had a fascinating tidbit: when the architect realized the danger, he arranged to deploy a network of strain gauges to monitor the actual stresses in the building's critical structural nodes. This was done as an emergency, overnight IIRC. Several days later, the data stopped flowing. It turns out that the electrician's union found out that it was done without the union contract and had the wires cut.
Trello is an interesting cloud-based system: basically you create boards with pages that contain detailed items organized into lists and such. You can check off work as it progresses, and retire pages and boards that are done.
Polish pianist Kristian Zimerman had his Steinway grand piano seized by the TSA twice: the fist time around they destroyed it, the second time they just detained it for a week: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krystian_Zimerman
No, they didn't confuse it with a vegetable---apparently Zimerman recently modified his instrument and the piano smelled of glue. As a result he ended up travelling with just the mechanism, fitting it by hand to the boxes at concert halls he plays in.
You clearly have no idea how the current, very successful public funding of science works. The model that we had since WWII is based on public funding via competitive, peer-reviewed grants. This review function is crucial and indispensable in order to insulate research from political and even social pressure. Again, the idea is that the public funding goes into a pool, and the researchers compete by submitting their proposals to an independent body of their peers who select most promising projects based on their expertise in the field. The problem with the Nebraska situation is that apparently their legislature ignored the independent review phase and directly allocated money for a custom-made proposal that fits their preconceived notions.
Why not LVM or btrfs snapshots?
Why do you think a publication charge is unjustified and does not add value? Clearly the peer-review and editing process are useful and necessary. We're just arguing over how to collect it: the old model is distributing the costs in a not very transparent way over the journal subscribers, whereas the new one charges the publishing author. I think the new system is more transparent and fairer.
A flexible TeX based system would re-run TeX when the layout changes. Can it be done quickly enough with modern technology? probably yes. Is it worth the trouble? I think the market has spoken and the perceived improvement was not enough to justify the trouble.
The article is confused about ARM chips, which are practically never socketed. It wouldn't make any sense because ARM CPUs are highly integrated---they tend to include on-chip equivalent of North Bridge, South Bridge and many peripherals such as video hardware, USB, Ethernet, I2C, serial and parallel I/O ports, timers, counters etc. In fact, that's the main problem with Intel in the embedded and enthusiast market: it's hard to make a small/low cost platform like Raspberry Pi because you need an expensive CPU... _and_ the chipset and peripheral chips. The cost difference is staggering---there are ARM microcontrollers that cost less than a dollar (admittedly, not the ones that you can run Linux on, due to lack of virtual memory, and small flash/RAM).
The Reinheitsgebot isn't such a blessing you make it out to be. Of course it prevents commercial drek laced with oil refinery products, but it also excludes lambics and other flavored craft beers (Midas Touch, blackberry witbier, etc, etc). I really like the beer selection here in the US, with educated public rewarding small craft breweries who put out surprisingly good product.
If you ever saved a file under a name such as mypage.html.Jun12 or, worse, mypage.html.old, you basically used a ghetto Version Control. You already agree that it is useful, so let me show how easy it is to do it properly, in a way that will remember everything about who, when, and how changed every file, and will prevent accidental overwrites and editing conflicts.
It's not quite right that USADA relies entirely on rumors. Their spokesman claimed that they have blood test results that can only be explained by blood transfusions, which are classified as doping, are illegal and were denied by Armstrong. I am just repeating what I understood---please correct if you can.
So, for starters, people appear to confuse secure boot functionality in UEFI with secure BIOS upgrades. The former is required by new Windows 8 hardware profile and is provided as specified by the UEFI standard. The latter is what the NIST spec is talking about---to prevent firmware malware attacks. The idea is simple---during normal operation BIOS is readonly; firmware updates write the new image to a temporary area, and upon reboot the old firmware takes over, realizes that there's a new firmware available, cheks the crypto signatures to ensure the provenance of the bew image and flashes it if they're OK. Unfortunately, there's no single implementation and AFAIK no common signing scheme---this stuff is proprietary and board-specific. NIST spec might make it saner, by requiring conforming implementations. Does it prevent firmware exploits? Not quite, because there are option BIOSes that reside on PCI cards and such, and AFAIK they are not covered by the BIOS spec. Is it better than a jumper solution proposed here? I believe so: I don't want to go back to the old days of having to crack open the box and boot DOS from floppies; they may work for a single machine or two but are not scalable for realistic largish deployments.
Ebay has inexpensive stereo microscopes resembling this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/20x-Stereo-Microscope-for-Gem-Coin-Stamp-PCB-Hair-/140757697961?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_203&hash=item20c5d005a9 I have a similar one that I got new for around $40. The magnification is a modest 50x, and it has fairly short focus length and depth but it serves well for electronic and mechanical repair and minor surgeries (splinters, hang nails)
True, and it's written by the same guy, Corbin Champion. Addi is a subset of matlab (or octave) written in Java.
It is rather unlikely that you have a massive corruption of actual data in multiple files--for that, you'd need a sustained write activity hitting all over the disk. Possible, but not very probable. Instead, I think you have metadata corruption, so that the filesystem points to wrong blocks. The glimmer of hope here is that the actual file data is mostly contiguous, so that you can scan through the image and identify individual files even without the filesystem information. There is a forensic tool called 'foremost' that does exactly that: rips through the binary filesystem image and as it finds headers of known data types (jpeg, gif, doc, mp3, etc. etc.), it tries to find as much following data as is consistent with known file layouts. The result of course has tons of cryptically named files of each type foremost knows about---not all of them are legitimate, even---but it's better than nothing.
Both Lowe and Home Depot stores in my area (suburban DC) have regular sales on a $9 standard pear-shaped E26 LED bulbs like those ones: http://slickdeals.net/forums/attachment.php?s=31e54508f1333ca3124e8f09193b7d10&attachmentid=1150528&d=1334012983 Even when there's no sale, there's a selection of LED bulbs in mid-$20 to mid-$30 price range. What is so novel about this one?
Apparently Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster have agreed to settle out of court, while Apple, MacMillan, and Penguin apparently mean to contest it. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webpronews.com%2Fmacmillan-ceo-john-sargent-responds-to-doj-lawsuit-2012-04&ei=vu6FT8LLK9H4ggfzvozWBw&usg=AFQjCNGWnKvqJJnBbXAkg-k9tADur-eSJw
Similar sentiments here---and a sad comparison with Steve Jobs who as far as I can tell didn't do much charitable giving, and apparently was quite good at finding tax loopholes so he didn't pay much in taxes either.
Some of my Scout parent friends are military doctors and they told me that better field latrines were a measurable factor in WWII. All armies had established procedures for setting them up, and the fastidius Germans did a solid job of it, if you pardon the pun---but the Americans added an additional step of covering the latrine box with a burlap sack as a fly barrier. The flies are a major disease vector, and as a result American troops were healthier and more combat ready.
Read the blog---Walsh suspects there's more shenanigans lurking in their code.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Man-made_tremor_shakes_Basel.html?cid=46232
It's curious how we never hear about rogue traders caught _earning_ 2B$. The hedge traders are supposed to run balanced trades that do not have large downside risks, but consequently aren't supposed to earn fantastic profits---so a trader who suddenly earns a lot of money was likely to have violated his guidelines, and the risk management people in theory should police it just as vigorously. In practice, I can't remember anyone being fired for extra earnings, so I suspect that those controls are purposedly kept vague and/or easy to circumvent.
If this can save so much money why isn't the health care industry already doing it? Are they really that stupid or are all the promises of big savings not likely to pan out?
It's a perfect example of the network effect. The savings can only materialize if everybody agrees on the same standard, getting past the usual 'what we are currently doing must be the standard' bickering.
Standardization efforts are hard because they combine technology, business and cultural issues. A successful standard has to find a balance between negative feedback of skepticism and low expectations resulting in unsatisfactory outcomes, and hyper-enthusiasm that can bring over-specified unworkable monsters.
Historically, the best outcomes occurred in a relatively uncrowded fields where early players made a wise strategic commitment to interoperability (c.f. the "rough concensus and working code" mantra of Internet standards).
The government might be a good neutral referee if it plays its hand well.
By the way, a working DRM would actually be a desirable feature of the electronic health record system---only you and your delegates should control the access to the records. It will be hard for the government to propose such access restrictions, because of the public distrust towards the digital art content control and government secrecy.