The rock face of Kilauea didn't collapse. A shelf on the coastline formed by lava flows from Kilauea collapsed. Kilauea is located fairly far inland and has no chance of collapsing without taking a decent portion of the island of Hawai'i with it.
Bogus meter pegged when headline omitted "Mile High Tsunami Devastates LA".
"The battle for [corporate] freedom must be won over and over again." --Milton Friedman
Who went on to say, "Our battle against government representing 'We the People' must be ruthless and relentless. A Free Market means freedom for corporate personhood only. The Pursuit of Happiness is the Pursuit of Multi-national Corporate Profit and nothing more. Apart from corporate persons, there is nothing but statistics drawn from the population of nameless faceless consumers and the commodity of their labor. With God on our side, let them be crushed back into the serfdom they deserve."
Let's change DRM (Digital Rights Management) to DUM (Digitally Unusable Music), then we can call them "DUM CDs".
Why accept the language of your opponent? Put it into plain terms people can understand.
But in this case it could be that Congress FEC, as the FEC can issue an adminstrative order or some new interpretation of existing rules that would take an Act of Congress to override. The FEC is totally unaccountable to voters, so partisan politics under the guidance of the current Executive branch will be the order of the day.
Under the assumption that the Democrats have used the internet more effectively than the Republicans, Congress would most likely NOT override some "anti-internet" FEC decision unless there is significant grassroots pressure.
It all depends on whether you are Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, right?
Re:So How Does Water Freeze?
on
How Ice Melts
·
· Score: 1
The course I took mostly focused on phase change in metal alloys. After some hand waving about the diffusion equation, I seem to recall that most of the rest of the course was based on empirically-derived models attempting to explain crytal formation, size, and chemical makeup of inter-crystalline material, based on rates of change in temperature and pressure, with the goal of predicting the macro-properties of the alloy after creation via some given process. It really seems that scientists do not have a complete picture of the topic, hence the long-held mysteries of the legendary "Damascus Steel".
So How Does Water Freeze?
on
How Ice Melts
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It turns out that, at the molecular level, nodody knows the answer to this question, either, especially in the presence of impurities.
In fact, in general, the subject of "Phase Change" is something of a black art, full of "empirical models", a great dissapointment for a mind that lusts for explanations in terms of hard mathematics.
Unfortunately, as a graduate EE taking this course in Chemical Engineering, my grade reflected my disappointment.
(Aside: my grad work was done in connection with the Army Corp of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab, thus my unnatural interest in the topic. As the cold war with the USSR gave way to the hot wars in the Mideast, funding for research in the associated topics has dropped off).
This is a sadly common CYA issue, and is done more to demonstrate they've been actively protecting their patents and copyrights than anything else.
This is apprently not the case, since according to Eric Fernandez (Zeb), developer of PxLinux ( who is also being harrassed):
I read on some forums some people try to find exceptions to the protection of copyrighted work to justify the legality of PxScan/PxView/PxLinux. Actually, there is no copyrighted work use in our code whatsoever. The copyrighted code of Plextools is not available anyway, and 100% of Alexander's code or my code is entirely original. So there is no copyright issue here.
They try to make us believe that communicating with the interface of the drive is protected though. The interface is an MMC-3 SCSI compliant, which is a standard of communication. All burning software use APIs that lead to communicate this way with any burner. The SCSI chain we use to send commands to the drive is standard. The MMC3 specifications are publicly available for people who want to write their own CD burner software (see http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq06.html#S6-6) which is a perfectly legal task. BTW, other recording software under free license exist, such as cdrecord (by Joerg Schilling), and the code is available.
Similarly : in Adobe Photoshop, you can directly send commands to scanner to scan an image and import it into your application. The Plextor claim would be similar to a Scanner maker sueing Adobe for simply accessing to their scanner, despite the SCSI commands to trigger the scan are through a standard communication interface. I hope this makes the things clear, and that even if PxScan was commercial, proprietary, shareware, it would be 100% legal. By the way, the GPL license is a commercial free-software license. It does not forbid selling the code, however, it guarantees the openness of the code by forcing any code modification to be released to anyone getting the binaries.
Stutz say "the presence of multiple producers stokes the furnace of competition (although perhaps only after protectionist governments and corporations are shouted down by consumers and crafty businesspeople)"
However, in part of the research world that I work in, involving 3D geo-realistic and geo-specific databases for real-time simulation and training, it is the "crafty businesspeople" who have resisted commodification, pushing their own proprietary standards, hoping to make THEIR standard THE de-facto standard, while the government (DoD) has mandated real standards (e.g. sedris.org and the HLA).
There are plenty of sites and p2p network programs available that are
devoted solely to downloading legally tradeable music (copyrighted but
free for non-commercial downloading and trading). Examples
include bt.etree.org (the
etree.org community bittorent tracker site) and the Further Network. There are
also ftp sites like gdlive that
accept both uploads and downloads. All of this is perfectly legal
and endorsed by the bands involved. This is actually a good
business model for bands that tend towards improvisational music:
every concert is different, fans trade shows, thus generating increased
interest, and the bands derive income from live performances and
related sales at their concerts. Such music genres include jazz,
bluegrass and newgrass, and jam-band rock-n-roll.
A high upload to download ratio is not at all proof of any illegal
activity. Personally, I listen almost exclusively to freely
tradeable music.
No need to worry, folks:
"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."
- George W. Bush, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003
I read the actual paper, (available, with registration required, here),
and granted, these guys did a good job on the analysis and experimental
verfication, and also should be commended for bringing attention to
this phonemena, but the basis for their work has been know for quite
some time. In the field of geophysics, it has long been known
that "spontaneous
potential" exists due to the flow of water through sermipermable
layers of rock and clay. A bibliography
on spontaneous potential in boreholes has been compiled by the USGS
with some papers dating back to the 1940's.
The real questions are how practical and economically viable this
approach will be for medium to large-scale power generation. For
natural sites (e.g. permeable rock layers), what type of electrodes can
be used, how well will they resist corrosion, and how large must they
be? The bottom line: how much will the power cost over the entire life
cycle in terms of $ per KWH?
For manufactured microchannel membranes or devices, added questions are
the cost of manufacture and the lifespan of the device. How
easily will the pores become clogged, what steps must be taken to
prevent this, how long will it take for the pores to erode over time,
and what is the expected lifetime of the microchannel device?
One big difference between pure science and engineering is that
engineers need to factor in economics.
Note: This question comes up from experience I have had in building clusters of 32 350 Mhz PII processors (pile of PCs), 128 AMD Athlon processors (custom rack mounted), and 2 separate 196 processor 1.4 Ghz AMD processors (custom rack mounted). The initial computing power/cost ratio is clearly a different issue from the Total Cost of Ownership, and the discrepancy is becoming larger with newer generation CPUs. The issue extends beyond raw power and cooling requirements into the issues of having to deal with the effect of the expected rate of failure per hardware device on the availability, reliability, robustness and resulting increasing cost of maintaining uptime on large clusters.
Total Cost of Ownership
on
Ask Donald Becker
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Given the decreasing ratio of power efficiency per transistor for newer generations of commodity CPUs, what suggestions do you have to reduce the total cost of ownership (including the necessary electrical power and cooling infrastructure upgrades)over the lifetime of large computing clusters?
Obviously, the absence of Forbidden Planet destines the Wired list for the
dustbin of history.
An ominous sense of Kafkaesque suspense actually can evoke more adrenaline
than ten speeder chases. Vision and sociopolitical relevence should
be weighted much more heavily than "adrenaline", anyways. The movie
version of Orwell's "1984
" is a case in point, on the strength of the story and its continuing social
relevence, it deserves a place on the list. Also, on my list, the 1973
cult classic Zardoz blows Robocop
away.
Star
Wars-related absenteeism could cost the US economy more than $300m in wages
when Episode II is released on May 16, according to employment experts.
Empoyment experts also estimate
that sex costs the US economy over 1.4 trillion dollars in lost production.
Dallas-based recruitment firm Gray, Limp, and Lifeless Corp. projects that
over 40 million man-hours per day are lost because
of fatigue and injury due to the previous night's sexual activities, and because
of lost work caused
by thinking about sex in the forthcoming night. According to CEO Dick
Lifeless, "Tens of thousands of sick days result from painful contusions
and
spained backs alone, caused by these slacker's propensity for wild, excessive
sex".
Mr. Lifeless told Reuters that only technology
firms were likely to be immune to the economic losses, because of the high
proportion of geeks among staff, who were likely to be spending the night alone, eating pizza, reading slashdot,
and web-surfing for pornography.
FYI
everyone, he's a Magistrate, not an actual federal judge. What this means,
basically, is that he does not have lifetime tenure (as do "real" federal
judges).
Good point, somebody mod this guy up.
According to this site:
"The current Magistrate Judge system was begun by Congress in
1968 expanding on the 175 year old United States commissioner
system. The Magistrate Judges are appointed based upon the recommendations
of a citizen's merit screening committee. In 2002, in addition
to the 471 full-time Magistrate Judge positions authorized there
were 59 part-time judges and 3 combination Clerk of Court/Magistrate
Judges who serve four year terms."
Let the "Honorable" Charles F. Eick know what you think of his decision: give him a call at (213)894-5234, fax to(213)894-3335, or write him:
The Honorable Charles F. Eick United States Magistrate Judge United States District Court United States Courthouse 312 North Spring Street Los Angeles, CA 90012
So does that mean I will be charged less if I use less bandwidth than specified
by the cap? I thought not. Time to reconsider earthlink.
Re:This is just flat out *wrong*
on
Lineo near Death
·
· Score: 2
You experience agrees quite well with what I have seen and experienced working in the private sector in the U.S., for example, when I worked for General Motors we always got the "pink slip" notification of indefinite layoff on the last day of our employment. I went through several layoff and recall cycles with that company on those terms.
What surprises me is that a University would behave like that. In my current job working for the University of Central Florida, I have never seen any faculty laid off without first receiving a one-year "terminal contract". There is always at least a one year warning - much more civilized than the private sector.
Of course, as soon as somebody learns to use these to induce euphoria, hallucinations, or any pleasant alteration of consciousness, the technology will be immediately outlawed, 25 year minimum sentences imposed, and SWAT teams will be breaking down your door.
One of the unintended side effects of the CBDTPA that has not been explored is the negative impact on many ongoing high-tech DoD programs vital for national defense.
In these days, especially, no politician will want to be perceived as obstructing the "war on terrorism" to benefit Hollywood and Disney.
In general, one part of the argument you should develop is that CBDTPA will increase complexity and costs of all programmable COTS hardware and associated software. It should be an easy task to point out the benefit of using low-cost COTS solutions to the national defense. This SEI Monograph discusses various laws and regulations that encourage or mandate use of COTS technology in DoD programs. Note that the term "COTS" refers to open source as well as proprietary software, and is meant only to exclude custom, one-off type software.
As far as the negative effect of the CBDTPA on open source software, and the resulting impact on national defense, you need only do some research on the wide use of open source solutions in ongoing DoD programs and operations to prove your point. Here is a link to a presentation (pdf) prepared by MITRE that discusses general use of open source software by the military. A couple of specific programs I would point to: Linux is a supported platform for the OneSAF testbed, and is practice is the platform of choice for ModSAF. These are especially important because much of the development for these packages is centered in the Modeling and Simulation industry concentrated around the Florida I-4 high-tech corridor (especially in Orlando).
Which brings me to a second argument that is likely to carry weight with a politician: the CBDTPA is bad for business (especially local business). Here I would emphasize the detrimental effect of the CBDTPA on the efforts of the High Tech Corridor Council. I would recommend that you contact CEOs of hardware and software companies located throughout Florida, and suggest that you are willing to lobby the senator on their behalf against the CBDTPA. It will take a lot of weight to counter Disney, but you may get more support than you imagine. One very pro-linux Florida software company that I am familar with is I.D.E.A.L. Corp, you should contact their CEO and start to network outwards from there.
Slashdot Mirror
The rock face of Kilauea didn't collapse. A shelf on the coastline formed by lava flows from Kilauea collapsed. Kilauea is located fairly far inland and has no chance of collapsing without taking a decent portion of the island of Hawai'i with it.
Bogus meter pegged when headline omitted "Mile High Tsunami Devastates LA"."The battle for [corporate] freedom must be won over and over again."
--Milton Friedman
Who went on to say, "Our battle against government representing 'We the People' must be ruthless and relentless. A Free Market means freedom for corporate personhood only. The Pursuit of Happiness is the Pursuit of Multi-national Corporate Profit and nothing more. Apart from corporate persons, there is nothing but statistics drawn from the population of nameless faceless consumers and the commodity of their labor. With God on our side, let them be crushed back into the serfdom they deserve."
Let's change DRM (Digital Rights Management) to DUM (Digitally Unusable Music), then we can call them "DUM CDs". Why accept the language of your opponent? Put it into plain terms people can understand.
Let's try again: ..it could be that Congress .LT. FEC (improper slashdot syntax?)
But in this case it could be that Congress FEC, as the FEC can issue an adminstrative order or some new interpretation of existing rules that would take an Act of Congress to override. The FEC is totally unaccountable to voters, so partisan politics under the guidance of the current Executive branch will be the order of the day. Under the assumption that the Democrats have used the internet more effectively than the Republicans, Congress would most likely NOT override some "anti-internet" FEC decision unless there is significant grassroots pressure.
It all depends on whether you are Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, right?
The course I took mostly focused on phase change in metal alloys. After some hand waving about the diffusion equation, I seem to recall that most of the rest of the course was based on empirically-derived models attempting to explain crytal formation, size, and chemical makeup of inter-crystalline material, based on rates of change in temperature and pressure, with the goal of predicting the macro-properties of the alloy after creation via some given process. It really seems that scientists do not have a complete picture of the topic, hence the long-held mysteries of the legendary "Damascus Steel".
It turns out that, at the molecular level, nodody knows the answer to this question, either, especially in the presence of impurities. In fact, in general, the subject of "Phase Change" is something of a black art, full of "empirical models", a great dissapointment for a mind that lusts for explanations in terms of hard mathematics. Unfortunately, as a graduate EE taking this course in Chemical Engineering, my grade reflected my disappointment. (Aside: my grad work was done in connection with the Army Corp of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab, thus my unnatural interest in the topic. As the cold war with the USSR gave way to the hot wars in the Mideast, funding for research in the associated topics has dropped off).
Stutz say "the presence of multiple producers stokes the furnace of competition (although perhaps only after protectionist governments and corporations are shouted down by consumers and crafty businesspeople)" However, in part of the research world that I work in, involving 3D geo-realistic and geo-specific databases for real-time simulation and training, it is the "crafty businesspeople" who have resisted commodification, pushing their own proprietary standards, hoping to make THEIR standard THE de-facto standard, while the government (DoD) has mandated real standards (e.g. sedris.org and the HLA).
There are plenty of sites and p2p network programs available that are devoted solely to downloading legally tradeable music (copyrighted but free for non-commercial downloading and trading). Examples include bt.etree.org (the etree.org community bittorent tracker site) and the Further Network. There are also ftp sites like gdlive that accept both uploads and downloads. All of this is perfectly legal and endorsed by the bands involved. This is actually a good business model for bands that tend towards improvisational music: every concert is different, fans trade shows, thus generating increased interest, and the bands derive income from live performances and related sales at their concerts. Such music genres include jazz, bluegrass and newgrass, and jam-band rock-n-roll.
A high upload to download ratio is not at all proof of any illegal activity. Personally, I listen almost exclusively to freely tradeable music.
No need to worry, folks: "See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." - George W. Bush, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003
I read the actual paper, (available, with registration required, here), and granted, these guys did a good job on the analysis and experimental verfication, and also should be commended for bringing attention to this phonemena, but the basis for their work has been know for quite some time. In the field of geophysics, it has long been known that "spontaneous potential" exists due to the flow of water through sermipermable layers of rock and clay. A bibliography on spontaneous potential in boreholes has been compiled by the USGS with some papers dating back to the 1940's.
The real questions are how practical and economically viable this approach will be for medium to large-scale power generation. For natural sites (e.g. permeable rock layers), what type of electrodes can be used, how well will they resist corrosion, and how large must they be? The bottom line: how much will the power cost over the entire life cycle in terms of $ per KWH?
For manufactured microchannel membranes or devices, added questions are the cost of manufacture and the lifespan of the device. How easily will the pores become clogged, what steps must be taken to prevent this, how long will it take for the pores to erode over time, and what is the expected lifetime of the microchannel device?
One big difference between pure science and engineering is that engineers need to factor in economics.
Note: This question comes up from experience I have had in building clusters of 32 350 Mhz PII processors (pile of PCs), 128 AMD Athlon processors (custom rack mounted), and 2 separate 196 processor 1.4 Ghz AMD processors (custom rack mounted). The initial computing power/cost ratio is clearly a different issue from the Total Cost of Ownership, and the discrepancy is becoming larger with newer generation CPUs. The issue extends beyond raw power and cooling requirements into the issues of having to deal with the effect of the expected rate of failure per hardware device on the availability, reliability, robustness and resulting increasing cost of maintaining uptime on large clusters.
Given the decreasing ratio of power efficiency per transistor for newer generations of commodity CPUs, what suggestions do you have to reduce the total cost of ownership (including the necessary electrical power and cooling infrastructure upgrades)over the lifetime of large computing clusters?
Lets revive the microwave beam weapons while we are at it.
It's been done.
Obviously, the absence of Forbidden Planet destines the Wired list for the dustbin of history.
An ominous sense of Kafkaesque suspense actually can evoke more adrenaline than ten speeder chases. Vision and sociopolitical relevence should be weighted much more heavily than "adrenaline", anyways. The movie version of Orwell's "1984 " is a case in point, on the strength of the story and its continuing social relevence, it deserves a place on the list. Also, on my list, the 1973 cult classic Zardoz blows Robocop away.
Empoyment experts also estimate that sex costs the US economy over 1.4 trillion dollars in lost production.
Dallas-based recruitment firm Gray, Limp, and Lifeless Corp. projects that over 40 million man-hours per day are lost because
of fatigue and injury due to the previous night's sexual activities, and because of lost work caused
by thinking about sex in the forthcoming night. According to CEO Dick Lifeless, "Tens of thousands of sick days result from painful contusions and spained backs alone, caused by these slacker's propensity for wild, excessive sex".
Mr. Lifeless told Reuters that only technology firms were likely to be immune to the economic losses, because of the high proportion of geeks among staff, who were likely to be spending the night alone, eating pizza, reading slashdot, and web-surfing for pornography.
FYI everyone, he's a Magistrate, not an actual federal judge. What this means, basically, is that he does not have lifetime tenure (as do "real" federal judges).
Good point, somebody mod this guy up.
According to this site:
"The current Magistrate Judge system was begun by Congress in 1968 expanding on the 175 year old United States commissioner system. The Magistrate Judges are appointed based upon the recommendations of a citizen's merit screening committee. In 2002, in addition to the 471 full-time Magistrate Judge positions authorized there were 59 part-time judges and 3 combination Clerk of Court/Magistrate Judges who serve four year terms."
Let the
"Honorable" Charles F. Eick know what you think of his decision:
give him a call at (213)894-5234, fax to(213)894-3335, or write him:
The Honorable Charles F. Eick
United States Magistrate Judge
United States District Court
United States Courthouse
312 North Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
So does that mean I will be charged less if I use less bandwidth than specified by the cap? I thought not. Time to reconsider earthlink.
You experience agrees quite well with what I have seen and experienced working in the private sector in the U.S., for example, when I worked for General Motors we always got the "pink slip" notification of indefinite layoff on the last day of our employment. I went through several layoff and recall cycles with that company on those terms.
What surprises me is that a University would behave like that. In my current job working for the University of Central Florida, I have never seen any faculty laid off without first receiving a one-year "terminal contract". There is always at least a one year warning - much more civilized than the private sector.
Of course, as soon as somebody learns to use these to induce euphoria, hallucinations, or any pleasant alteration of consciousness, the technology will be immediately outlawed, 25 year minimum sentences imposed, and SWAT teams will be breaking down your door.
BTW, I am willing to help out further, offline, in any way I can. Go to my homepage and feel free to send email.
One of the unintended side effects of the CBDTPA that has not been explored
is the negative impact on many ongoing high-tech DoD programs vital for national
defense.
In these days, especially, no politician will want to be perceived as obstructing
the "war on terrorism" to benefit Hollywood and Disney.
In general, one part of the argument you should develop is that CBDTPA will
increase complexity and costs of all programmable COTS hardware and associated
software. It should be an easy task to point out the benefit of using
low-cost COTS solutions to the national defense. This SEI
Monograph discusses various laws and regulations that encourage or mandate
use of COTS technology in DoD programs. Note that the term "COTS" refers
to open source as well as proprietary software, and is meant only to exclude
custom, one-off type software.
As far as the negative effect of the CBDTPA on open source software, and
the resulting impact on national defense, you need only do some research
on the wide use of open source solutions in ongoing DoD programs and operations
to prove your point. Here is a link to a presentation
(pdf) prepared by MITRE that discusses general use of open source software
by the military. A couple of specific programs I would point to: Linux
is a supported platform for the OneSAF testbed, and is
practice is the platform of choice for ModSAF. These
are especially important because much of the development for these packages
is centered in the Modeling and Simulation industry concentrated around the
Florida I-4 high-tech corridor (especially in Orlando).
Which brings me to a second argument that is likely to carry weight with
a politician: the CBDTPA is bad for business (especially local business).
Here I would emphasize the detrimental effect of the CBDTPA on
the efforts of the High Tech Corridor
Council. I would recommend that you contact CEOs of hardware and
software companies located throughout Florida, and suggest that you are willing
to lobby the senator on their behalf against the CBDTPA. It will take
a lot of weight to counter Disney, but you may get more support than you
imagine. One very pro-linux Florida software company that I am familar
with is I.D.E.A.L. Corp,
you should contact their CEO and start to network outwards from there.